Metal Gear Christmas Oneshots
by HyperKey
Summary: The collected christmas oneshots of 2015 and 2016.
1. 2015

And here we are. For the promised Christmas one shots :D  
I've been looking forward to them!  
This is playing after MGR:R in 2018, no AU this time.  
I've researched all weekdays and even have an approximate of school holidays to start. It's hard for me to write a Christmas story that takes place in summer... stupid southern hemisphere. But they do live in New Zealand, and that's all I have to go with, sadly.

These stories are supposed to be happy, funny and fluffy, HOWEVER, every family has struggles and it can't always be all happy. Besides, 25 happy stories will probably get boring very fast.

A few more notes: I live in Germany (English is not my native language). We celebrate Christmas on the 24th. I have never really experienced how American's celebrate Christmas, I've just read about it and asked a few people, So I hope it's not getting too cliche.

DISCLAIMER: None of the characters used in here belong to me. I just play around with them.

 **1st December**

John had been hyped for Christmas even before Halloween. The boy missed celebrating Halloween the way he used to back in New York. Jack couldn't blame him. Halloween had always been fun ever since he had learned about John.

It would be the first Christmas in two years the boy he could spend with his father and when he had learned about that he had been talking about nothing else for at least a week. Having summer on Christmas was something that was hard getting used to for the man. Not that Christmas had mattered much before he had met Rose. He didn't have family traditions, had had no idea what couples did on that day. How could he have? By now it was almost normal. Almost too normal. John was nine now. Time flew by so fast.

Jack was in the kitchen, absentmindedly staring out of the kitchen window. He had been home a few days earlier than planned, John had been so surprised he cried. The man chuckled at the memory. Something felt so wrong about the warmth outside and the sun burning on the road. He couldn't tell what it was, but somehow he had gotten used to winter on Christmas.

As a child it hadn't mattered. He couldn't remember if he had ever given a damn about Santa Claus or if he had even known about him. By the time he had the freedom to care he had been too old to believe in stories like these, too tainted to give in to the innocence a story like that needed. He had had a different legend to believe in.

Rose had tried to give their home a little Christmas spirit. Not that he really knew what that was. She kept talking about traditions and how her parents did it. People Jack had never met, not sure if he ever would. But it was important to her. Every year she did the same things, and he had to admit that by now Christmas was something special to him. It meant that he could be with his family if he was lucky. This year he wasn't sure if he was lucky. Without a real job, with barely any money. He felt as if he was thrown back into the time before maverick. He was relying on Rose again.

The maintenance costs had been reduced, but it was still too much. He needed to find a job. And soon. Maybe this time someone would hire him in the area.

He scoffed at the thought. Cyborgs were more hated than ever, regardless of how nice they could be. Was he even a nice person? Would _Jack_ come out if someone ticked him off?

Shaking his head to himself he turned to the clock above the door. Something he didn't have to do. He could just look at the HUD, but it was the small sense of normalcy, of doing something normal humans did, that made him feel less uncomfortable. He had shut the HUD off the moment he had entered the house and it would stay off until he needed it again. It was nothing Rose or John noticed, set to him it meant so much. To have his vision free of intruding elements, nothing bothering him.

Doktor, probably the only person Jack still was in touch with, had made sure that any error would immediately pop up, even with the HUD shut off. There was nothing to worry about.

He heard an angry tirade of cusswords from the living room and sighed deeply. "John, watch your language." He muttered loud enough so the boy could hear it while he picked up the plates from the dining table and put them into the sink.

"But this stupid game!" John complained.

"Take a break and come back to it later."

"No! I wanna do it now!"

Jack shook his head to himself, walked into the living room. "If you calm down first, it'll be easier."

"You don't understand!" the boy growled angrily. "If I stop now I have to do the whole battle again!"

"Don't yell at me. I didn't make the game."

John angrily tossed the controller across the room and growled loudly. "I want to play the part after this, but this fucking thing doesn't let me!"

"Watch your language." Jack repeated, getting slightly upset now, that controller had missed him only by a hair. He was sure it wasn't on purpose, but he couldn't let that slide. "I'll shut if off if you don't calm down."

"That's blackmail!" the boy yelled.

Jack calmly walked over to the play-station and flicked the off switch.

"Why did you do that?!" John screamed, face red in anger.

"I warned you."

"I hate you!" the boy screamed, tears filling his eyes. "You're an asshole!"

Jack took a deep breath, reminded himself to stay calm. "Go to your room. Think about what you just said to me." He pointed to the staircase, watched the boy dash upstairs and tried to ignore all the curses the boy threw at him.

The door slammed shut, something crashed down. Jack was pretty sure it was one of the Lego figures the boy at placed on the handrail. He slumped down on the couch, stared at the TV screen and how it complained about the cut connection. Why had he done it? He knew it would set the boy off even more... And why had John lost his temper like that?

Was it because he was getting older now? Had he been upset because of something else?

With a deep sigh he stood, picked up the controller, noticed the small dent it had left in the wall between the two windows. He picked the device up and put it back to its place on the play station, then turned off the TV and went back to the kitchen to wash the dishes like he had originally planned.

When he was done with it and the plates back where they belonged he went upstairs and silently knocked at John's door. He then noticed it had been the wooden sign on the door that had crashed down. He had made the sign himself in school a while ago. In bold childlike letters it had 'John's Room, please knock', written on it.

Now it was lying on the floor broken in three big pieces. It could probably be glued back together. He picked the pieces up, looked at the white door and sighed. John didn't reply to the knock, was probably still upset.

Jack silently opened the door, instantly caught the eyes of his son who looked at him as if he had done something unforgivable. The boy was sitting on the bed, one of his big plushies clutched to his chest, tears visible on his cheek even though he had stopped crying.

The man sat down on the bed, next to the boy, but didn't say anything. John instantly leaned against him, discarded the plushy to grab the man's shirt. Jack put an arm around the boy, ruffled his hair.

"...I'm sorry." John muttered. "I was so upset..."

"Apology accepted." Jack smiled. "Wanna try beating it together?"

John shook his head. "The game is stupid... How long until mom comes home?"

"About two hours."

"Can we bake cookies for her?"

"Don't know if we have everything for that. Let's take a look?"

John nodded and jumped off the bed, dashed down the stairs and almost fell.

"Slow down, the kitchen doesn't run away." Jack sighed and followed him.

When he entered the kitchen John had already opened the cabinets he could reach without a chair and was pulling one of the chairs over to the counter to reach the ones mounted to the wall. Jack let him, but was ready to catch him should he fall.

"There's no flour..." The boy sighed in slight disappointment. "And eggs are out too..."

The older man nodded, already prepared himself to be asked the question that would undoubtedly follow now.

"...Can we go buy some cookies then?" John asked as he turned around to his father.

Jack slowly nodded, not quite registering the movement. He would have much rather stayed home and forget about the cookies. John wouldn't let him off the hook now, he knew that.

And so he grabbed the dark coat, put on shoes and put a hat on John's head.

"You're ruining my hair..." The boy complained.

"And the sun's ruining your health."

"Can't we move back to New York...? I want snow on Christmas." John asked when his father locked the front door and headed over to the black car parked not far from the house.

"What about Tyler? Wouldn't you miss him if you move away?"

John grumbled and climbed into his seat. Jack smiled when he shut the door, glad he had avoided that question when he started the engine.

"How about we buy the stuff we're missing and then pick your mother up from work?"

"Sure!" John agreed. "She'd be surprised!"

Jack smiled to himself, ignored the radio after John had insisted on listening to Christmas songs and drove down the road.

"But don't let mom bake them..."

"John..." Jack sighed. He couldn't argue with that though.

"Well... unless your cookies are worse than hers..."

"You'd be surprised."

"You can bake... right?"

Jack chuckled. "Yeah." He watched John sink back into his seat with a relieved sigh. "Can we buy decorations for them too?"

"I can't promise anything..." Jack sighed. Always the stupid money...

"Plain cookies are okay too!" John quickly muttered in slight embarrassment.

 **2nd December**

Chapter Notes

I got distracted a lot with this one... now i'm having migrane too. Sorry, this one's really short. -

Jack sighed when Rose looked at him with this strange looks she always had when she wanted him to do something. . "Can you put John's door sign back together?"

"I can try." He muttered, sighed when he saw the object in question on the dining table in the kitchen, glue next to it. He grabbed an old newspaper and spread it over the table before he sat down and began to try fixing the sign. The boy had done a good Job in breaking that thing, but it had been cheap glued together wood in the first place. It would have broken sooner or later.

Rose was busy preparing dinner, John was in the living room, playing his games. After a while Jack had fixed the sign and set it aside to dry. When he cleared the newspaper off the table Rose suddenly cursed silently and dropped the knife she was holding, rushed out of the kitchen and upstairs, leaving her husband standing there in slight confusion.

"Rose?" He called. "Is everything alright?"

"Just cut my finger, I'm fine." She replied, walked downstairs while she wrapped a band-aid around her finger and flashed him a smile. "Isn't deep, don't worry."

She walked past him and proceeded to cut up the vegetables. "The laundry should be done, can you put it outside?"

"Yeah..." Jack left the kitchen and turned left, opened the door to the laundry room and stepped into a puddle.

"Aw shit!" He cursed, saw water spraying from the tap in the back of the room. "Rose! Turn the main tap off!"

Rose came rushing to him, confused. "What? Why?"

Jack only pointed to the spray of water, didn't have to say anything as she turned around and ran back to the kitchen. A few seconds later the water died down and Jack cursed once more when he realized that the valve was broken. That needed to be replaced. Quickly.

Rose came back with arms full of towels and just dumped them on the floor. "That was the last thing we needed..." She growled angrily. "I'll call Dan, he knows how to fix these things..."

Jack only nodded, took off his wet shirt and socks and walked through the hallway to put shoes on. Rose handed him the mop and a bucket and he walked back to the laundry room, shut the washing machine off and started to wipe the floor.

John, who had noticed something was going on was standing in the door frame and watched his father. "Ew... that's a lot of water."

Jack was about to reply something but John had already walked away again. He came back dressed in rain boots and grabbed one of the towels lying around.

"I got this, you don't have to help." Jack muttered.

John shook his head. "That's almost like a pool!... just in the laundry room... and the water is cold... and you can't swim in it." The boy pouted and made a displeased sound. "This pool sucks."

"It's just a giant puddle."

"Can we go to a real pool?" John muttered while he grabbed another towel.

"Let's finish this first."

"Okay. But can we go?"

"I'll... think about it."

John sighed deeply, not satisfied with the answer, but he let it slide.

 **Chapter 3**

She was looking at him with that certain glance, the one that told him she wanted to ask him something. Usually it was something he didn't like. He didn't doubt that it would be different today.

"Jack, I was thinking about Christmas..."

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. That again. This holiday hadn't held any meaning for him for decades. Rose was totally emerged in family tradition even though she barely invited anyone. John, like any other kid, loved it for the presents. Jack didn't care much about it. Of course he liked it when he actually had time off on Christmas, which didn't happen that often either. There were enough important people who needed to be somewhere on that day. Rose had showed him how Americans celebrated it. Doktor had given him insight on how Germans did it, It was a difference like night and day.

"What about it?" He asked casually as he stacked the plates on the dining table together and carried them over to the sink.

"My parents invited us."

The cyborg almost dropped the plates. He froze in place, stood still and stared at the crumbs on the white plate. Why would they want that? He understood that they wanted to be with their children on Christmas, but why him too? There would be a lot of strangers, people he should know, but he didn't want to. Now that Rose had finally gotten back in touch with them she called them at least once a week. Thankfully they used Skype for that. Jack didn't want to think about the bill.

"They're paying for the plane tickets...-"

"Rose..." Jack muttered, trying to find excuses. Why did he have to be off work now...

Rose scooted her chair back and stood, took the car-keys off the counter and put on the jacket she had placed over her chair.

"It'll be fun."

"What about Sunny and Hal?" he tried.

"Did they ever accept the invitation?" Rose countered.

Jack hung his shoulders. It was true. Sunny and Hal were always busy on Christmas. The excuse was different every year, but it was still an excuse. He wondered what they would come up this year. He also wondered if they really were busy, or if they didn't want to see him and his family. Maybe it would just stir up memories.

He shook his head, sighed.

"See? John would love to see his grandparents again."

"I know..." he muttered. "What about your sister and brother? Their kids?"

"What about them?"

He looked at her in defeat. Maybe it was a nice change for once. And still. If they reacted badly to him being a cyborg, where was he going to stay? Her parents seemed to be fine with it, at least they hadn't asked. Or they hadn't noticed. He hadn't been in the house long enough to get to know them better.

Rose sighed when she realized what he was getting at. "Jack, it's fine." She tried to reassure him. "My parents know. And my siblings aren't like other people."

"You haven't seen them in over a decade."

"They're good people." She argued.

"How do you know that?"

She growled. "Jack! I trust my family!"

He bit back his reply and filled the sink with water.

"You should trust them too." It was such a weak statement, he almost laughed at it.

"I don't even know them."

"Yeah, because you chose to run away. Again." Now she was accusing him. "You're always running!"

Fleeing was the only option to him. If there was danger you fled. Basic instinct. "I know..." he muttered.

"Just this once. If it goes bad, we don't have to go again."

"Fine." He growled to have it out of the way. Already he was getting anxious.

 **Chapter 4**

He was dozing off on the couch, John already asleep next to him, curled up in a blanket and cuddling the man tightly. Jack barely took note of the movie playing, the images a hazy blur in his barely awake state. It had been forever since he had been this tired. Somewhere inhis mind he registered that Rose turned off the TV and picked John up. He looked at her for a moment, saw her reassuring smile. She had known he would wake up from that.

"It's okay, I'll put him to bed." She smiled and left the living room.

He had no energy left to nod. The day had been fun but s strain on his mental state. John had actually managed to get him to visit Tylers parents and while it went pretty well, he had still been incredibly anxious and sort of scared. They asked a lot of questions, some very personal ones too. Everything about it was straining. At least they seemed to trust him now and in the end Tyler had even tagged along as he and John walked back home and they had a wild session of playing video games.

He flinched when Rose pulled a woolen blanket over him and kissed his cheek. "You okay?" She whispered with slight concern in her voice. "Haven't seen you so tired in ages."

He nodded slightly, tiredly wrapped his arms around her when she settle down next to her. "'s fine..." He mumbled, closed his eyes again and finally allowed himself to drift off into sleep. Rose's hand in his hair made it so much easier to relax, and the soft words she was muttering, whatever she was saying, were calm and reassuring.

It didn't take long for him to fall asleep.

He woke with a start, sat up in confusion, disoriented and breathing heavily. It was no nightmare that had ripped him out of his sleep. It was noise. A terrible deafening beeping noise that sounded suspiciously like a smoke detector. The sun was up in the sky again. He jumped off the couch, quickly located the source of the noise.

It was the one in the hallway. It smelled a bit burned, but he couldn't see any source of fire. With a frown he reached to the ceiling to shut the thing off, then peeked into the kitchen. Rose had opened both windows, was standing there with a broom, probably to reach for the button of the device Jack had just turned off.

"Sorry..." She apologized, gestured to the frying pan on the stove and laughed nervously. "Burned it."

He sighed, only then realized how fast his heart was beating. He had been ready for anything, but not something like that.

With a yawn he looked at the clock over the door, was surprised that it was already noon. John would be home soon. He turned back to rose, noticed a plastic bowl next to the stove.

"I... wanted to make pancakes..." She hung her shoulders. "Last time they worked out, but..."

He walked up to her, smiled. "Want me to help?"

"Anything so that thing won't go off again..." Rose sighed, hung her shoulders.

His smile grew wider. "...You know, you've gotten better."

"Eh?"

"At cooking."

"Really?!" She exclaimed in surprise.

"Or I just got used to it..."

She scoffed and lightly punched his shoulder. It wouldn't hurt him even if she put more strength to it, but she would hurt herself and his feelings. "You're being mean."

"Just stating the truth-" He couldn't continue when she pulled him down to her and kissed his lips, catching him off guard.

"Don't be so direct about it..." She whispered, wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him.

"I don't like being lied to, so I won't lie to you either."

"Word it better then..." she sighed, slightly disappointed that he didn't understand she wasn't being serious.

"My taste sensors aren't complaining as much as they used to?" he smirked, held her tightly.

She made an annoyed sound, shook her head then. "You're unbelievable."

"And you're cute when you're angry." He whispered, joking now.

She chuckled "That's a lie right there. You hate when I get angry."

"It all depends on the situation."

Rose looked up at him and kissed him again. "Are you going to help me now or not?"

"I said I would, didn't I?"

She nodded, let go of him. _Look at that_ , she thought. _Didn't end up in a fight._

 **5th December**

Rose jumped slightly when the Elevator she and Jack were in suddenly stopped between two floors. They had been in the mall, looking for Christmas presents and were on their way home.

"...Crap." Rose muttered and dropped the two bags she was holding.

Jack tapped the emergency button, got an automated message that the problem would be investigated. He was annoyed enough after three hours of walking through the mall, trying to avoid all the curious and judging gazes. It was just too warm to hide in the coat, he'd risk overheating the systems. So he had decided to go with a long sleeved shirt and some jeans, hoped people wouldn't look to closely at his face.

"I don't like this." Rose sighed in annoyance. "Can't you do something?"

Jack lifted an eyebrow. "I could, but then I'd have to pay for repairs."

"Good point..." Rose hung her shoulders and sat down. "I get stuck in the elevator at work often enough. This sucks." She complained.

She had been looking forward to making dinner, had everything prepared already, she would just have to take it out the fridge and heat it up. Annoyed she took off her shoes, the heel was killing her. It had been too long since she had last worn shoes like these. She fumbled with the hem of her dress, stared at the mirror in front of her.

"Could be worse..." Jack muttered and sat down next to her.

"There could be elevator music?"

He laughed silently. "Yeah. That too."

Rose leaned against him, took a sip from her coffee cup. "We actually did get stuck in an elevator together before."

"Yeah... in the apartment building you lived in..."

Rose grimaced. "Compared to that elevator this one's huge."

"Probably won't take them five hours to discover that it's stuck." He shrugged.

Rose hugged his arm. "I gotta pick John up from school... And make dinner, and do the laundry..." she trailed off.

Jack looked at the mirrors around, caught a glimpse of Rose sticking her tongue out at him. He lifted an eyebrow at that. "How much sugar is in that coffee?" He asked, half joking.

"Not enough." She sighed and leaned her head against the cold mirror behind her. "What's taking them so long."

Jack shrugged, shoved a notification away. Filters needed to be replaced soon. This could turn into a really uncomfortable situation depending on how long it took for them to fix the elevator. This wasn't an immediate problem, he had set the notification time to be at least three hours before, yet he wondered if it was an error. He had replaced them just a few days ago, usually they lasted longer.

"I need to pee." Rose muttered as she stretched. "Stupid coffee."

Jack smirked. "Oh the joy of being a cyborg..." The sarcasm in his voice was so obvious, it made Rose snort.

"About the visit to your pa-" Jacks stopped short when the lights flickered out, flinched and grabbed Rose's hand out of a reflex.

"Great." Rose sighed. "What about that visit?" She asked when she fumbled in her purse to get her phone out. She unlocked the screen and the soft light illuminated the cabin.

"...Never mind." Jack muttered, a deep frown on his features.

"It'll come back on soon. Maybe it's just a black out or something." She tried to reassure.

There was something Jack hadn't told her, but she had caught on to it. He hated dark places. It didn't surprise her, darkness often felt overwhelming and was terrifying. Especially when one had no control over the situation.

"I know..." He muttered silently.

"I don't like this either..." She admitted.

Jack reached for the red button, pressed it again. The same automated message played and he sighed, crossed his arms.

"My parents moved to New York a while ago." Rose muttered eventually

"I noticed. Their address changed."

"Not happy to go back there, huh?" Rose asked, looked at him.

He shrugged. "Just for a few days... should be okay."

"We can take John to Times Square, show him the city from the empire state building..."

"There are bigger sky-scrappers, you know?"

Rose's smile had something mysterious about it. "I want to see it. The city from up there... just like back then."

He shook his head to himself, rested his head on her shoulder. Almost immediately she reached for his face and ran her hand through his hair.

"John mentioned he wanted to see the statue of liberty."

Jack lifted his head. "He already saw it when he was younger."

"Up close, Jack. He asked me how it was built."

Jack let his head sink again. "He asks a lot about how things are working, lately."

Rose smiled, remembered how often John was bugging his father with certain questions regarding his body. The man didn't like them, but to Rose it seemed that he was relieved that his son was interested rather than scared.

"Might be a phase, but I don't mind it." Rose smiled. "Maybe he fixes elevators in the future." She shrugged.

"He's too smart to end up working at a place like this."

Rose furrowed her brows, then nodded. "Sunny mentioned that he's catching on really fast on whatever she's telling him."

"He's probably got that from you." Jack scoffed. "I'm always getting tricked..."

Rose rolled her eyes, flinched when the lights suddenly flickered back on and the cabin started crawling to the second floor like they had originally planned.

"Finally." Jack hissed, stood and took the bags. When he reached for Rose to help her up the doors opened and revealed two firemen and someone who looked like staff from the mall.

"My apologies, this elevator was supposed to be shut down earlier." The short man muttered. He seemed to be in his fifties, hair gray and he was a little on the chubby side. While he looked friendly enough, both Rose and Jack were just happy to get out of the elevator.

"Excuse me, sir-"

Jack flinched, already knew the next question would be about him being cyborg. He tried to find an answer before the man continued speaking. Rose wasn't looking too happy either.

"Is there anything we could do to make up for this incident?"

The cyborg lifted an eyebrow and turned towards the man. "Fix the damn elevator." With that he turned around and hurried over the marble floor, around a corner to get to the parking level. Rose hurried after him, slipped on the floor with her shoes when she had almost reached him.

He dropped the bags to catch her, Lifted her up a bit so she could stand properly again. Slowly he let go of her. "You okay?"

She nodded. "Stupid shoes."

"Let's head home..."

"I need to get to a restroom first... you can wait in the car." She smiled, looked for the next restroom when he walked away.

Rose really hadn't thought that a simple trip to the mall would end up with getting stuck in an elevator.

 **6th December**

Rose sighed in annoyance when Her son and her husband were racing through the living room, throwing pillows at each other. She didn't mind that they played, but John had just stumbled over a ball of yarn and sent it rolling over the carpet. In their heated game neither of them noticed and Rose knew better than to get in the way of them while they were running around like that. Still, she had lost the knitting needle in the piece she was knitting and she would have to fumble around with it for a while to get everything back onto it later.

When Jack ran into the coffee table and almost tripped Rose had enough. She clapped her hands loudly to get their attention.

"This is a living room not a playground. If you can't contain that excess energy you two should get outside an mow the lawn."

Both hung their shoulders at that and dropped the pillows they were holding. "We were just playing..." John mumbled.

"And turned the living room into a mess." Rose crossed her arms. "The yard is big enough for you two big babies to play in."

The woman saw her son pout as he turned around and trudged out of the living room. Jack picked up the pillows and fired them onto the couch with a little more force than necessary and followed John. Sometimes Rose wondered if she had two children.

The woman picked up the yarn, but the needle back into the stitches and continued to knit the peach colored jacket she had started a few days earlier. Ever since Johnny had told her about the birth of his daughter, Rose wanted to make something for the girl. Maybe it was also to try and get Meryl on her side. The woman certainly didn't like Rose much, and she didn't bother to hide it.

Rose dropped her work when she heard a muffled yell. She knew who they voice belonged to and while it surprised her to hear her husband rather than her son, she couldn't help but worry. John often ran into things or fell when they played. Jack was quite skilled in calming the boy when he had hurt himself, by now. With a slight frown she went to the back door in the kitchen and peeked out. Jack was crouching on the floor, rubbing his head, John stood there, pale as a ghost and stared at the man.

"What happened?" Rose asked and stepped outside. She barely realized she wasn't wearing shoes.

John pointed to the door to the small storage room where Rose kept the gardening utensils. "S-Something fell down..."

"I'm fine." Jack hissed and stood, face scrunched up in pain.

"Let me see." Rose insisted and batted his hand away as he tried to keep her from touching his head. "Just let me look." The woman sighed.

The man slowly took his hand down and Rose took a closer look, parted the hair to see if there was any damage done. "Can't see anything."

"I told you I'm fine. Just hurts."

Rose turned to look at the small room, couldn't see anything on first sight, then she noticed that one of the shelves had fallen down, it was probably what had hit her husband. She jumped backwards with a surprised yelped when Jack suddenly reached over her head and blocked the second shelf with his arm as it fell down as well.

"...This place is falling apart..." Jack muttered.

Rose wanted to laugh for a moment, but then she noticed that the man wasn't joking.

"Tap broke, now the shelves break. We're not even living here for five years."

"We can fix the shelves..." Rose muttered, still sort of surprised.

"I-is the house coming down?" John then asked with a frightened look on his face.

Jack flinched, realized his words had scared the boy. He crouched down in front of his son, smiled and ruffled his hair. "It's not, I was joking."

"But stuff really keeps breaking..." John muttered silently, bit his lip and fumbled with the hem of his t-shirt.

"Stuff breaks all the time. When your mother still had her old apartment she called me all the time to fix things."

John perked up at that and looked at his mother. "Really?"

Rose laughed nervously. "Yeah..."

"Cool!" John grinned and dashed back inside.

Jack made a displaced sound when Rose hit him in the side with her elbow.

"I only called you once. And you made it worse. I had to buy a new washing machine after that."

The man blushed in embarrassment. "Well..."

"And that one time you broke my toaster. Or my radio." Rose smirked. "You're terrible when it comes to things that need power. Should keep your hands off of them."

Jack lifted an eyebrow. "You can replace the filters then."

Rose kept smirking. "Sure. If you let me."

He shook his head. "Nah. I can do that on my own."

"Don't like having my hands in your parts?"

"I'd rather have them somewhere else." He smirked and hurried back inside before she got what he was hinting at.

 **7th December**

Chapter Notes

I'm feeling so embarrassed for these oneshots. .

Rose frowned when Jack suddenly grabbed her from behind and almost made her fall. His head hit her shoulder, the movement so uncontrolled and quick that it made her furrow her brows. His breath was going rather fast and he was trembling slightly. She had been about to put carry the empty laundry basket back into the laundry room, but found herself unable to move much with her husband latched onto her like that.

"Jack?" She asked in bemusement. Something had been off about him all day. For a moment she thought he was going to do something when he grabbed her shirt, but when he stumbled and almost made her fall again, she let go of the laundry basked and turned around to him as good as she could in the current position. He swayed violently, tried to keep his balance as Rose tried to help him stand.

"What's wrong?" Concern was seeping into her voice, a lot of things raced through her head. Malfunctions, errors, a broken part. Maybe something had disconnected. She almost growled. John had come down with a bad cold in the morning, hadn't been out of bad all day and now Jack was like that.

"I..." The man breathed. He had trouble speaking and Rose flinched at that. "I... don't know..."

Rose was barely able to keep him steady. The few steps towards the couch felt like an eternity. Every step he took almost made him fall.

When he slumped down on the furniture, Rose could see his flushed face and his glassy eyes. It wasn't the first time and she dreaded it. This could mean anything. And no matter what it was, it wasn't a good sign. What was malfunctioning? Why? How could she fix it? How long until she found someone skilled enough to help?

"Jack, what's going on?" She asked with a louder voice, held her cold hand against his cheek. He was going to pass out, it was obvious, but she couldn't let him. Not without knowing what was happening.

"...Don't know..." He slurred.

She shook him lightly. "Jack! I can't help if you don't tell me!"

He shook his head, tried to tell her something, but passed out before he could say anything more.

Rose cursed loudly, dread filled her insides. She turned around almost lunged at the silver briefcase hidden from the curious views of visitors between the bookshelf and the movie drawer. While she dragged it out of its hiding place, she kept glancing back to her husband. He had fallen to the side, still breathing heavily.

Rose fumbled with the combination lock on the suitcase. Four digits she would never forget. He had set it like that for situations like these.

 _0-4-3-0_

The locks snapped opened and she grabbed the small laptop inside, opened it up and started it while she grasped the cords and carried both over to the couch. Once the laptop was ready to be used she connected the cord to it, then unbuttoned her husband's shirt to get access to the ports on his back. She had done this a few times. Not since the body had been reworked though. The blood type was differed, and she thanked whoever had switched it. That had gotten rid of a lot of issues.

The reading she got seemed normal to her untrained eye. She knew what readings were important, what to look for, yet everything she knew was that all of the readings looked normal to her. That didn't change the fact that Jack had passed out, was running a fever, and over all looked really bad off. The program was set to display any errors and warnings that would have been displayed to him and the lack of any of those messages caused her brows to furrow in concern

Confused and frustrated she tried to wake him again. "Jack... I don't like this..."

As she had expected, her husband did not react to her voice. What could be happening? Was some system malfunctioning and didn't send an error message? Why where they living so far away from people she trusted with these things? Not for the first time, Rose cursed that they were living here. She grabbed his legs and put them on them on the couch, made sure he wouldn't fall over and hurried into the kitchen to get the phone. When she returned blue eyes were focusing on her.

"Don't..." Jack muttered silently. "...it's probably just a cold."

"A cold?" Rose echoed in confusion. "That never happened before."

"It'll be fine..."

Rose crouched down next to him, rested her hand on his forehead. "...are you sure about that?"

He nodded, smiled weakly.

"If this fever isn't down in the morning, I'm calling someone." She threatened, adjusted the blanket over him and kept staring at him. She had no idea how this had happened or how it would go away. _Any_ sort of fever couldn't mean anything good with him. Maybe it was something the systems couldn't pick up. Something that wasn't a cold.

She let the laptop run, put the power cord in so it wouldn't run out of batteries. Everything still looked normal.

She grabbed her knitting piece and continued to work on the jacket, looked up at her husband from time to time, then shifted her attention to the laptop screen. What was she going to do? She reached into the briefcase, grasped the slip of paper with a telephone number scrawled on to it. She put it on the table, used one of the decorative stones she had wanted to switch out for Christmas decorations as a paperweight.

After a while she stood and went upstairs to see how John was doing. The boy was sitting in his bed, playing with a few action figures.

"Mom?"

Rose smiled at him, entered the room. "You doing okay?"

The boy nodded slightly. "Maybe it was just a one day thing."

"Maybe." Rose sat down on the bed, held her hand up to his forehead. "Let me take your temperate again, alright?"

"Mom... dad was strange earlier."

"He was?"

"Mhm! He was moving really weird, you know like after when you spin around too much you can't walk straight..."

Rose lifted an eyebrow.

"Maybe he got my cold?"

"It looks like that, yeah." Rose muttered with a sigh.

John then climbed out of the bed, stumbled slightly as he grabbed his blanket and dragged it off the bed.

"John?" Rose asked in slight confusion.

"I'll tell him that the cold isn't so bad. I feel a lot better already."

The woman smiled, nodded slightly. "You do that. Be careful on the stairs."

 **8th December**

Having John stay home because he was sick was nothing new to Rose. Adding Jack to that was something entirely different. Had there ever been a time where she had seen him sick that wasn't caused by the body malfunctioning? How could she have known that the man would catch that cold? That had never happened before.

John was already up and about again. Last time she had looked into the living room the boy had been surrounded by blankets on the carpet and was playing video games while his father was lying on the couch, looked at if someone had knocked him out. Rose was sort of amused by it. Hundreds of cyborgs couldn't take that man down and then a simple cold forced him to his knees like that. It would be alright, Doktor had reassured her. Treat it like a cold on normal humans. And so Rose did. The fever worried her a bit. Last night had been a hassle. She hadn't slept at all and was running back and forth between John's room and the living room. Worry wouldn't let her get rest. It didn't matter how often Doktor told her it was alright.

Now Rose was in the kitchen, tried to fix something to eat for herself and John and kept wandering into the living room to check on the two male occupants of the house. John had fallen asleep on the carpet and she covered him with one of the many blankets lying around. She knew better than to shut off his game and just paused it, then turned to look at her husband. He was lying with his back towards her, hair a wild mess, two blankets almost pulled over his head. She could hear his heavy breathing even from that far away and sighed.

She remembered the last time she had witnessed him being sick with something a normal human could catch. That had been over a decade ago and it certainly hadn't been this bad.

He was still asleep, barely reacted when she carefully placed her hand onto his forehead and pulled it back almost immediately. The fever was still bad. Doktor had mentioned that the body would take care of the temperature, but that didn't keep her from worrying. She knew it was no use to try and figure out how a cyborg body took care of a cold or anything similar and slowly went back into the kitchen. She decided to push the cooking back until John woke up again and ate two cookies.

It wasn't anything she would do under normal circumstances, yet sometimes she gave in to little temptations like that.

She jumped a little when Jack suddenly appeared in the kitchen. He was clinging to the doorframe, swaying dangerously. Rose frowned, her questioning gaze lingering on her husband. Why was he up?

"Jack?"

He grumbled something, poured himself a glass of water and headed back to the living room. Rose followed him, watched as he sat down on the couch and buried himself back into the blankets and pillows. He fumbled for the remote, shut off John's game and started the DVD from last night while he was sipping the water.

Rose settled down next to him, made sure not to sit down on the blankets. "You okay?"

"Functioning." He muttered into the glass.

Rose grimaced. That was not a response she had expected.

He put the glass on the coffee table and curled up next to Rose. "I'll be fine."

Rose nodded slightly, sighed. "I can take Monday off work."

"I can handle John." Jack mumbled into the pillow.

"And who takes care of you?"

He looked at her, a smile ghosting over his lips. "I've had worse."

She leaned in and kissed his flushed cheek. "I'm worried anyway."

Now he chuckled. "It's fine."

Rose sighed. "Alright. If you say so... Do you need anything?"

He shook his head. "Is it okay to let John sleep on the floor?"

"Yeah, it's carpet, and he's lying on a lot of blankets. Doesn't he look kind of cute like that?"

Jack watched his son for a moment, curled up in colorful woolen blankets. He briefly wondered where they all came from, then his vision blurred and he grunted in annoyance. It had been ages since he had come down with a cold. He briefly closed his eyes, felt the sleep creeping around the edges of his consciousness. Rose moved the blanket over his shoulders, ran a hand through his hair. She whispered something but it sounded far away and he didn't bother to figure out the meaning when he let himself slip into a light sleep.

He registered that Rose moved away, didn't care much about it.

Rose sighed, crouched down next to John. His fever was gone by now, yet Jack didn't show any improvement at all.

"Mom?" the boy muttered with a yawn.

Rose smiled at him. "Good afternoon, John."

"...did I sleep that long?"

"Sleep's good when you're sick, you know?"

"Yeah you told me a bunch of times." The boy sat up, stretched and leaned to the side to look past her. "Is dad still sleeping?"

"He was awake for a bit."

"Is he okay?"

Rose had no idea. He seemed to hold up pretty well, but who knew if it wasn't an act. "Yeah" she muttered. "Are you hungry?"

"A bit..."

The woman nodded and got up, ruffled his hair before she left for the kitchen. A friend at work had given her a recipe for some soup and she really wanted to try it out. It took her quite a while to prepare it, but when she was done she felt sort of satisfied. John headed into the kitchen, attracted by the smell. He lingered in the door way, one blanket over his shoulders.

"Wanna eat in the living room?"

"You're allowing that?!" John immediately ask in disbelief.

"This is an exception."

"Yay!" The boy jumped a bit in excitement and happily walked back to the living room when Rose filled two bowls with the soup and followed him.

She set them on the coffee table, gave John a spoon and watched him settle down on the ground, staring at the TV.

"What movie is that?"

Rose shrugged slightly and grabbed the remote. She turned on the main menu, then sighed and turned the movie off. "Not a movie for your age."

"Aw man... but they had swords and all!"

"Listen to your mother..." Jack grumbled from the couch without moving or showing any other sign of being awake.

The boy pouted for a moment, then focused on the soup again.

"What's this smell...?" Jack asked when he turned around and sat up slightly.

"Mom made soup." John happily informed his father.

The man lifted an eyebrow. "I see."

"Want some too?"

He shook his head. "I'll pass."

"It's really good!" John grinned. "For mom."

"John!" Rose hissed.

Jack chuckled. "Really?"

The boy nodded frantically and held his bowl out to his father. "Try it!"

 **9th December**

The heated session of videogame playing between John and Jack came to a rather quick end when the screen suddenly went dark and all lights in the house turned off.

John squeaked in surprise. The sun was setting already, there wasn't much daylight left.

"Blackout." Jack sighed and grabbed one of the blankets behind him as he stood and looked out of the window. The street lights were off too, and none of the neighboring houses had lights on. "Seems to affect the whole street."

"This sucks... now we have to do the battle again."

"It's just a game." The man smiled and grabbed a lighter on the table to light the candles Rose had put into glasses all around the living room. She was currently helping a neighbor by walking their dogs.

Once the candles were lit Jack sat down on the couch, still sort of out of it but feeling better by now. John hadn't left his side the whole day.

John looked around, amazed at all the different patterns the decorated glasses projected onto the walls.

"At Roy's place mom made it look like that too. But our glasses are prettier."

Jack nodded to show the boy that he was listening, but he wasn't interested in hearing any more about it. While he understood the reasons Rose had had for what she did, he didn't want to think about it more than necessary. They didn't speak about it and Jack had hoped the boy had forgotten most of his stay there. These five years probably had had a great impact on the boy, it was no surprise he remembered so much about it.

"I haven't seen Roy in a loooong time." John noted. "He's funny!"

Jack snorted. "He is?"

John nodded. "Mom said he was something like your boss for a while."

"Yeah, something like that."

"He showed me how to make snowflakes out of paper!" John grinned.

"That's why you're so good at it, huh?"

When Rose had bought wrapping paper with Christmas patterns John had begged her for a piece of all of them and had made a lot of colorful snowflakes. They were now spread all over the house and decorated almost every window.

The boy nodded. "But those are all I can do... Sunny tried to tell me how to fold flowers but I don't get it... can you fold paper planes?"

Jack thought for a moment. "Not really..."

John huffed and crawled under one of the many blankets spread over the couch.

"...I can fold drinking cups out of paper..." Jack muttered after a while. That had been useful once. A long time ago.

"Really?"

"Mhm..."

John grinned and jumped off the couch, dragged the blanket with him as he dashed into the kitchen and got a few sheets of paper. "Show me! Show me!" he exclaimed when he returned.

Jack had to smile at that and took a sheet of paper. He slowly began folding, waited for John to follow his steps. After a while they had finished and John eagerly started with another.

"They look like tiny hats!"

"They can hold water for a while."

John's eyes lit up. "Really? I wanna try that!"

Happily the boy ran out of the living room and back into the kitchen. Jack followed him carrying two of the candles so the kitchen wouldn't be as dark. John had already filled one of the cups he had folded and squealed when the water didn't leak out.

"It really works! This is so cool!"

"Don't leave it in for too long, it's going to leak." Jack smiled, couldn't believe that something as simple as that had made John so happy.

 **10th December**

Jack shuddered when the doorbell rang. He had no idea who it could be, John was in school, Rose working. Neighbors usually didn't come here unless it was really important. Whoever was at the door didn't take the hint when the door wasn't opened and kept ringing. The noise was obnoxious, annoying. He paused the movie he was watching and headed to the front door. Through the milky glass he could see two shapes. Probably a man and a woman, from the looks of it.

He assumed it were people trying to sell something so he kept waiting for them to go away.

They did not go away, Jack could hear them talk to each other while the male of the two kept pressing the button of the doorbell. The cyborg was getting seriously annoyed. Who in their right mind kept ringing the doorbell for that long when no one opened?! What were they? Police? They would have made more of a racket if they were.

Someone else?

With a slight growl he ripped the door open, ready to yell at whoever was bothering this much, and almost stumbled backwards when he saw two familiar faces and a baby.

"So you were home!" The blond male in front of him exclaimed. He was slightly shorter than Jack, sunglasses on his head and squinted to get a good look at the Cyborg's face.

Jack blinked at them, both in confusion and surprise. Where were Johnny and Meryl doing here?

"What are you doing here?" He asked silently.

"Just checking on you and your family." Meryl muttered. "Since you suck at keeping in touch. I've sent you tons of emails and you haven't replied to even one of them. That's rude, you know?"

"Could've sent them to Rose." Jack muttered, crossed his arms. Meryl and Rose weren't getting along very well. That was mostly Meryl's fault, though.

"Very funny." Meryl hissed. "Nice house you have, though."

"Thanks." Jack muttered drily.

"Must be tough to live here, so far away from everyone." Meryl said.

"It's surprisingly relaxing without people constantly running the door in."

Meryl sighed. "Alright, I'm sorry, what I said was rude. We've been up for almost two days, our hotel room isn't ready yet, Johnny sent our suitcases to the wrong location and I almost got run over by a truck earlier."

" Why are you here?" Jack muttered, not really interested in what she was telling him.

Meryl threw her hands in the air. "I just told you!"

"M-Meryl-" Johnny tried to interfere.

"Shut up Johnny." She hissed at him and turned back to Jack. "So are you gonna let us in or not?"

Jack hesitated for a moment, then stepped aside to let them in. As much as he wanted to leave them standing there, he was sure that would come back to bite him later.

"Is there any particular reason for you to show up now?" Jack wanted to know when he closed the door and pointed to the kitchen.

The two followed him, both staring at everything as if they had never seen a kitchen before. Jack was getting seriously annoyed by it. He cleared one of John's Lego figures off the table before Johnny could grab it and set it on the counter next to the sink.

"Well, Johnny asked Sunny for your address." Meryl shrugged. "We just wanted to see how you and your family were doing."

Jack scoffed. Somehow it sounded like a lie. He didn't get what these two wanted from him and just wanted them out of the house before Rose came home.

When John unlocked the door and peeked into the kitchen he frowned in confusion. "...Johnny...? Aunt Meryl?"

Meryl had insisted to be called Aunt. Maybe it had a normal reason behind it, but Jack couldn't see anything normal about that little detail. Who cared about it anyway? They weren't even related.

Johnny seemed relieved though. "John! You've grown a lot!"

John eagerly nodded. "Yup!"

The two left the kitchen, headed for the living room and Jack was left alone with Meryl. What did she want from him?

"He looks really cute." Meryl commented with a smile.

Jack took a deep breath, crossed his arms and hoped that instead of them leaving, Rose would show up so he'd have Meryl out of his hair. He didn't care if they would fight. At least she would leave him alone then.

Meryl leaned in closer, the smile growing. "My father wanted me to invite you and your family for Christmas but we couldn't get in touch with you so we asked Sunny."

"... And you went all the way to New Zealand to tell me that?"

"Nah, we didn't even know you were here until Johnny asked Sunny. We wanted to take a vacation here. When Johnny told me I thought I could kill two birds with one stone."

"I see." Jack muttered. So Campbell was still alive after all. "Rose's parents invited us already."

Meryl sighed deeply, looked slightly disappointed. "I... really need to go to the bathroom..." She almost whispered then.

"Upstairs, the door in the middle." Jack told her, flinched in surprise when Meryl gave him the baby to hold and almost ran upstairs.

Jack stared at the girl in his arms, tried to remember her name or how old she was. She couldn't be older than two. But what was her name? It felt strange to him to hold a baby after so many years. Sunny had been the only infant he had ever gotten to hold. John had been five already when he had seen the boy for the first time.

He had no idea what to do with the girl. At least she wasn't crying.

"Baaa!" The girl exclaimed happily and flailed her legs around before she pawed his face and gripped his hair.

Sunny had done that too. His hair had been longer back then and Sunny had had a lot more strength than the girl he was currently holding. Maybe it was the age difference or the fact that Sunny had been scared.

"Baaa!" The girl squealed once more.

"No. Jack." He muttered silently.

A giggle from the girl. When she let go of his hair he held her a safe distance away before she could grip it again.

Meryl returned to the Kitchen then, smiled. "She didn't start crying, that's nice."

The woman made no move to take the girl back and Jack stood there, awkwardly holding the girl and staring at Meryl.

"What's her name again?"

"Evelyn." Meryl told him. "Johnny insisted we'd call her something that started with 'J'... I managed to talk him out of it. I know too many idiots with names starting with J." She shook her head to herself and frowned at him. "...That probably sounded rude."

Jack sighed, turned to look into the hallway when the front door was unlocked once more.

"Jack, there's a car in front of the house-" Rose stopped when she looked into the kitchen and noticed Meryl standing there.

"...Hello." Meryl muttered silently.

Rose nodded at her, forced a smile on her face. The tension between the two was almost visible. "Afternoon, Meryl." She muttered when she places something on the counter behind Jack.

"...I know I've been really rude towards you..." Meryl sounded nervous now, almost afraid. "I wanted to apologize... for saying all these nasty things to you."

Rose nodded. "I was planning on apologizing to you too, actually." She said with a small smile and left the kitchen. She returned with the finished Jacket for Evelyn. "I made this... "

Jack was glad Meryl took Evelyn from him and turned around to look at what Rose had put on the counter. Plane tickets, the passports for her and John and a stack of paper in an envelope. He took one of the tickets into his hands, frowned at them. The flight would go in five days. Now there really was no way to back out of it.

"Rose..." He muttered silently, but the two women were talking too loudly to hear it. He left it at that, hoped it was alright. Her parents must've really wanted to see them if they were willing to spend this much money on them.

 **11th December**

It was a normal Tuesday morning. She woke up minutes before her alarm, sun blocked out by dark curtains they had only recently bought. She wasn't really affected by the sun shining through the window though, Jack usually blocked the light with his body if he was still asleep when she woke up.

He was, this time. She watched his sleeping face for a while, sort of proud of how calm he looked. She had seen any expression on his face, but a relaxed one like this was extremely rare. She smiled, knew better than to give in to the urge to kiss him. He would wake up from that. He woke up if the bed shifted too much, if the door opened just a bit too loudly, if she dropped something in the kitchen. Anything would wake him up.

She had gotten that habit of sneaking through the house as quietly as she could just so he would get some decent sleep.

With a silent yawn she got up turned off the alarm before it could go off and picked up the stack of clothing she had set on the ground in front of the wardrobe the day before. Another habit, just so she didn't have to make any unnecessary noises. Soundlessly she opened the door, slipped out and closed it. Then she slipped into the bathroom. The door was loud, creaking and complaining about every movement. She knew how to avoid it and silently shut the door before she took a shower.

When she was done with that she dressed, toweled her hair dry and went to John's room to wake him so he could get ready for school. The boy grumbled, begged for five more minutes and Rose left the door to his room wide open when she headed downstairs to prepare breakfast for the boy and herself.

Ten minutes later John went downstairs, already dressed but still yawning an sort of grumpy looking.

"Mom my hair doesn't stay up..." The boy grumbled and sat down at the dining table to eat whatever his mother presented her with.

"It's gotten too long to hold that position."

"But it looks stupid like this." John complained while he bit into the toast.

Rose settled down with a cup of coffee, smiled at her son. "I think it looks good on you."

"But it's so flat and..." frustrated the boy clenched his fists. "Boring."

The woman sighed with a small smile. "If you'd brush it, it would probably look better."

John scrunched up his nose but finished the toast and went back upstairs. When he returned to the kitchen five minutes later the woman couldn't hold back a small chuckle.

"See? I told you it looks stupid. Even you find it funny."

Rose shook her head. "No, no." She smiled and crouched down to be on eyelevel with him. "I just think you look a loooot like your dad like this."

John's face lit up. "Really?"

"Yup." Rose nodded.

"...I want a haircut though..."

Rose chuckled and kissed his hair. "I'll see what I can do."

"Okay!"

The woman watched him pack his bag and sneak glimpses at the mirror in the hallway. He kept adjusting his hairstyle until he saw his father leave the bedroom.

"Dad!" John exclaimed happily. "Mom says I look like you when I have my hair down!"

Jack chuckled tiredly and ran a hand through his hair, making it look similar to John's usual hairstyle. "Then I'll look like you when I have it up?"

John giggled, rushed upstairs to hug the man. "I really gotta go... Tyler's already waiting, I can see him poke his nose into the glass!" He pointed to the front door and the shadow that looked suspiciously like Tyler.

Rose had told him not to ring the door bell so he just kept waiting until John left the house. "You're the best, dad." John grinned, then dashed downstairs, grabbed his backpack and left the house with a quick. "Bye mom!"

Rose watched the two boys walk down the street chatting and laughing. This had been a rather quiet morning. John would sometimes throw fits until his father said something.

"He really needs a haircut." Jack muttered when he entered the kitchen.

"He looks cute like that." Rose smiled.

"He'll ruin his eyes with the bangs in front of it all the time..."

Rose sighed, handed him a cup of coffee and looked out of the window again. "I'll call Betsy's mom later. She's a hairdresser."

Jack nodded and Rose turned to hug him. She really wanted to stay home and do other things than work today.

 **12th December**

Chapter Notes

Half way done!  
Thank you for the comments so far :3

I know most of these stories lack in depth... trying to change that. Haha. Hope you like them anyway.

Jack paced around between living room and kitchen, phone clutched in his hands as he looked out of the windows whenever he passed them. It was way past time for John to come home from school He would have accepted half an hour, maybe a full hour, but now it was two hours and he couldn't shake the feel that something had happened to the boy.

He had called Rose, she told him to calm down and that she'll look for him. He found that she was way too calm. Maybe he was just overreacting... Years of experience taught him that people being late never meant anything good.

He opened the front door, paced between the garage and the small patch of flowers Rose had planted a while ago. John was nowhere to be seen. When the phone in his hands rang he almost dropped it. Quickly he accepted the call, almost growled when he noticed that this was not Rose.

"This is Tyler's mom. Just wanted to ask if he's at your place, he hasn't come home yet..." The words of a worried mother.

Somehow Jack felt relieved now. If Tyler wasn't home. chances were high that John was with him. The question where the boys were was still there though. "He's not here." He replied silently. "John isn't home yet either..."

He heard the woman sigh. "...These two little rascals. If Tyler shows up, send him home immediately, alright?"

He agreed, asked her to do the same if John showed up at her place and stared at the phone after the call had ended. With a look over to the many flowers he sat down on the steps to the front door, waited.

Ten minutes later John rounded a corner. His clothing was muddy and wet, but he looked happy. The boy's grin disappeared quickly when he saw his father waiting for him. The boy frowned, chewed on his lip, realized what he had done.

"Are you okay?" Jack asked silently.

John nodded slowly.

"Where were you?"

"Uhm... Tyler found this tiny lake... and then he fell in and I pulled him out and then we got lost..."

Jack tried hard to hold back a smile. "Is Tyler alright?"

Another nod. "He just went home too."

Jack stood, unlocked the front door and nodded inside.

"...Are you angry?" John asked silently as he took off his muddy shoes and placed them next to the big flowerpot on the porch.

"Not anymore." The older man muttered.

John's smile returned and he squealed in surprise when his father picked him up and hugged him tightly despite the dirty clothing. "When you want to go somewhere, come home first. Mom and I were worried."

"I'm sorry." John muttered and hugged his father. "...I think I need a shower..."

Jack chuckled. "Guess both of us do now..."

"Mom's going to kill me when she sees the laundry..."

 **13th December**

Jack was surprised to find Rose awake early on her day off. He found her in the living room, sitting on the carpet curled in a blanket a bowl of chips next to her and playing one of John's video games.

"Morning." She muttered when she noticed him.

"Good Morning..." he greeted her, slightly confused. He had never seen Rose do this before. "Are you okay?"

She shrugged, sighed deeply and put her chin on her knees, stared at the TV screen and continued to unenthusiastically push the buttons on the controller.

Jack lifted an eyebrow at that. "...Really?"

"Mhm..." Rose grumbled. "I kind of like this game." Her voice was rather monotone and she sounded quite tired.

Jack sat down next to her, moved the bowl of chips away. Something was definitely going on, but he couldn't tell what it was. "...You know, you always nag when I avoid questions..."

Rose sighed once more, leaned against him and paused the game.

"I'm having second thoughts on visiting my parents." She finally admitted.

He grimaced, wasn't sure what to say. He knew it was a bad idea, but the tickets were there and the paperwork was done too. Backing out of it now would be a serious waste of money.

Rose looked at him, put the controller aside and gently touched his face. She avoided looking into his eyes and took a deep breath. "Yesterday my mother told me about something one of my sisters said... and keeping that from you doesn't feel right."

He frowned, wanted to say something, but she continued before he could.

"Her name's June... And she's...-" She shook her head. "Trying to defend her." A smirk ghosted over her face. "She doesn't like Cyborgs."

Jack grumbled in annoyance. Of course there had to be someone like that in Rose's family. "What now? ...I heard a lot of things from strangers, but... this is probably some sort of family... what am i supposed to do?" He muttered.

"I know." Rose said softly. "She's going to have to accept it."

He scoffed. As if anyone who thinks like that would ever accept it. "And if she doesn't?"

"Then I'll show her just how much of an evil bitch I can be." She said firmly, without any hint that she was making a joke.

"Sure..." He muttered. He knew Rose could do that. It wasn't really surprising him in the least.

"But we'll wait and see what happens." Rose smiled then. "I just wanted to tell you."

"What about your other siblings?"

"I'm not sure about my brother, but my other sister is fine with it. I got some emails from her."

He nodded slightly. "As long as they don't ask questions..."

Rose smiled sadly, knew as well as him that the questions woudl come sooner or later.

 **14th December**

John was jumping on the bed of his parents in extreme excitement. Rose had placed all clothing she would pack into the suitcases on the bed and wasn't very happy to see her son jump through the neatly folded clothing.

"We're visiting Grandma! We're visiting grandma!" The boy kept yelling over and over again, squealing happily.

Rose sighed, rubbed her temples. "John, Please go to your room. I need to pack..."

John stopped Jumping pouted in disappointment. "But moooom..."

Rose shook her head. "You packed your suitcase already, now I need to pack mine. You could help me."

The boy huffed, crossed his arms and hopped off the bed. Silently he left the room, considered going into his room but he decided to see what his father was doing. When he reached the living room he saw the man sitting on the couch, rummaging through a silver briefcase.

"What are you doing?"

"Hm?" Jack looked up, smiled slightly. "Looking for something."

"What are you looking for?" John asked, already eager to help his father find whatever he was searching.

"A cord... It should have been in here, but it's not."

The boy frowned, then looked around. "I'll help you find it!"

Jack laughed silently. "Just ask your mother, she probably put it somewhere."

"No. Mom kicked me out of the bedroom."

"Because you were jumping around on the bed like a wild monkey, hm?"

John laughed sheepishly and settled down next to his father. "Are my cousins nice?"

Jack shut the case and locked it, then shrugged. "I don't know, never met them. I think it's a boy and a girl. They're both a year older than you..."

"They fit in between me and Sunny then! I wonder what they're like..."

The man smiled, ruffled the boy's hair. "I'm sure they'll be nice."

"Do you know their names?"

Jack frowned slightly, not very surprised he couldn't remember the names even though Rose had told him the previous day. "You know I'm terrible with names..."

John sighed, but his grin remained. "I'll ask mom then... hope she's not mad anymore." With that the boy headed back to his mother, peeked into the bedroom.

"Moooom?"

"What is it John?" Rose asked silently. She was sitting on top of the suitcase and tried to close it.

"What are the names of my cousins?"

Rose proceeded to stand on top of the suitcase but still made no progress in getting the lid anywhere near the locks. "Pepper and Jake."

The boy jumped up and down excitedly. "Are they nice?"

"No idea." Rose pressed through her teeth, still didn't succeed in closing the suitcase. "Jack! I can't close this thing!" She then yelled.

A moment later the man appeared in the bedroom, placed one foot on the suitcase and hat it closed in a matter of seconds. "There."

John squealed, hugged the man. "You made a dent into it!" He exclaimed excitedly. "That looks really cool!"

"I hope this thing doesn't snap open." Rose muttered with a tiny smirk.

"You put too much into it." The man shot back.

"Not really, but We'll need warmer clothing. Mom said it's freezing."

"It's New York. Of course it's cold."

Rose held a hand at hip height. "That's how much snow they got in the past few days."

John now almost screamed with excitement. "They have snow?! For real?!" The boy jumped up, let out a surprised yelp when his father caught him and sat him on top of his shoulders.

"I wanna have a snowball fight! And make snow angels! And build snowmen! Oh, oh! Does Grandma have a sleigh?!"

"Calm down." Rose laughed now. "Its way past your bedtime."

"But I'm so excited! I can't sleep!" John squealed.

Jack then carried the boy back downstairs, sat him on the couch and looked through one of the many kid's movies that had found their way into the movie drawer. The opening scene of Atlantis wasn't even over, when John was already soundly asleep.

Jack pulled a blanket over the boy and watched to movie by himself.

Rose brought John to bed, gazes around the room. They would be away for two weeks. Their flight would go in the evening on the next day. John would hopefully be asleep for most of it. The flight was no joke. The time alone was terrible, then the switching of time zones and climate.

She scoffed at her thoughts, kissed the boy's hair and returned to the living room. She was strangely excited, yet sort of worried too. How would her siblings react to it?

 **15th December**

The flight had been stressful and annoying, the Airport was packed and Rose's patience was running thin. John had fallen asleep sometime during the flight, was now tiredly stumbling after his father who had grabbed the boy's hand and tried not to drag him through the airport. With all the people around even at this time, the chance of the boy getting lost was pretty high.

They got their suitcases, Rose headed to a payphone and John almost fell asleep while walking. Jack picked him up, walked up to Rose and leaned against the wall. The woman turned away from the phone after a moment and walked up to her husband. She was pale, a deep frown on her face. When Jack noticed she had already wrapped her arms around him.

She was shaking, clawing his shirt.

"Rose?" He asked softly moved his free arm around her. "What's wrong?"

She buried her face in his jacket took a deep breath. She knew all these little skills to calm down and distract herself but this time none of them worked.

"...I'm terrified..." She eventually answered. "You know I altered my appearance... My parents are fine with it, but my siblings have never seen me like this before."

"That's why you were so tense the past few days." He concluded. "It wasn't about me at all." He wasn't accusing, voice gentle and understanding. They were both afraid, yet do him it wasn't that important. He wasn't part of this family, not really. On paper maybe, but that was all.

"I lied to you again..." Rose mumbled into his shirt. "I'm sorry."

He leaned down to her, made sure John wouldn't fall and kissed her lips. "I don't have siblings, I don't know how that is like..."

"We've always been together, did everything together... and then I just disappeared out of their lives for eleven years... They have probably changed too."

"There's only one way to find out..." Jack muttered. He was surprised by his own words, couldn't take seeing his wife like that. He wanted to cheer her up.

"You're right." She smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "Dad said we should wait here. He'll pick us up."

Jack nodded, adjusted John's position and wrapped and arm around Rose's shoulders. They stood in silence for a while, Rose still shaking and showing no signs of stopping soon. Jack himself was getting quite nervous with each passing minute. He had avoided thinking about the next two weeks until now.

When Roses father walked up to them the couple froze. Jack because he had no idea what to say, Rose because the man had someone in tow. It was a blond woman, about as tall as Rose.

The woman followed Rose's father and stopped when he did. The older man hugged Rose tightly, leaving Jack to feel quite out of place. He looked around, flinched when the blonde woman suddenly stood in front of him. Was this the sister Rose had talked about? Is that why she stared? Or was she just curious?

"Liz... " Rose muttered after her father had let her go, then gave off a surprised sound when the blonde woman jumped at her and hugged her tightly. "Mary! God you've changed so much I didn't recognize you! How are you? What were you doing all this time?!"

Jack lifted an eyebrow, somewhat relieved that this was not the sister Rose had talked about. It was the one who was fine with everything. He gazed at Rose's father, shook his hand nervously. He had forgotten the name of the man again. He was small, a little chubby, hair already falling out. His smile was friendly and open hearted just like the last time Jack had seen him.

"We should get moving." Rose's father muttered after a while. "The Roads are full of snow and I'd rather not get stuck there."

Jack handed John to Rose and took the suitcases, silently asked Rose what her father's name was. She almost laughed at that. It was nice to see that she wasn't as nervous as before, yet he was only getting more anxious.

The cold air bit into their cheeks, snow visible everywhere, even in the dark night sky. John would be in for a surprise when he saw it in the morning.

The Drive to the house wasn't as long as Jack had anticipated. He shook his head to himself when he got out of the car and looked at the building. It was obviously an apartment complex, and whoever lived here had enough money to show it off. Now he felt even more out of place.

Rose's sister helped getting the suitcases into the elevator and pressed a button for the last floor. The door to one of the apartments was opened almost in sync with the elevator doors and Rose's mother walked over to them, a wide grin on her face.

"You're finally there!" The said quietly, but obviously had trouble to keep her voice down in her excitement.

Jack briefly wondered if all mothers were like this and how his mother would have been like, before he shoved that thought as far away as possible and carried the suitcases into the apartment. It was huge, easily more than four times bigger than any apartment he and Rose had ever lived in. It even had an upper level.

"You must be tired. Little Johnny is already asleep... Look how cute he is." Rose's mother smiled at the boy, reached out to him. Rose handed him over, then she grabbed her sister's arm and explored the building. There were a lot of decorations around, a real Christmas tree in the corner of the living room, not like the fake one they had at home. A few Christmas lights.

Jack couldn't help but smile when he saw Rose look around, excited like a child. That was a whole new side of her. Was that how she acted around her siblings? He took a step backwards when Rose's mother suddenly appeared in front of him.

"No need to be shy." She smiled warmly at him. "You're part of the family, after all."

Jack was taken aback by that. He had seen her once before and not for long. Now she already considered him family? If this had been a mission it would have been a lot easier.

"The other two arrive on the 23rd, so you have plenty of time to show your Boy New York." She continued. "I could show you some really nice places where you can take him."

The younger man smiled nervously. "Thanks... I... haven't been in New York in a long time..."

She nodded. "Mary told me." A laugh and she leaned in gestured for him to come closer. When he lowered his head to be on her level, she whispered into his ear. "Out of all my son's in law, you're the most handsome."

He blushed in embarrassment. She was more than twice as old as him, why was she saying things like that?

"Mom, don't scare him." Rose's sister laughed. "Look you made him blush."

Her mother placed a hand on Jack's arm as if to calm him. "I was just telling him that he looked better than your husband."

"Mom that's..." Rose now interfered.

Her sister shook her head. "No, no. She's right. He's growing a beard and he looks really strange with it, but I don't want to tell him."

 **Chapter 16**

Rose sat up with a gasp, needed a second to understand where she was, silently reminded herself that it was just a nightmare and everything was fine. Her heart eventually calmed down and she sighed deeply. Her short was sweaty and glued to her body, same with her hair.

"Rose?" Jack silently said as to not wake John. "Nightmare?"

She knew he would ask that. He wasn't the only one with nightmares, yet hers were rare and almost never woke her up. But she knew exactly why she had snapped awake like that.

"I guess..." She whispered back.

He wrapped her arms around her when she lied down again, this time so close to him that their bodies touched. He held her tightly, gently stroked her hair and pulled the blanket over her.

Rose let out a shaky sigh, closed her eyes again and listened to her husband's heartbeat. The sound was barely any different from that of a normal human being, yet it was this exact sound that put her at incredible ease when she was feeling down.

"You're shaking." Jack whispered after a while.

"I know..." She replied silently.

"What's wrong?" He ran a hand over her back, tried to calm her. Had no idea what was going on.

Rose chuckled silently. "...It's all thanks to you that I found my parents again."

"But shouldn't you be happy then?"

"I am, Jack." She muttered. "...They constantly threatened to kill my family if I didn't comply... and..." She bit her trembling lip, held him tightly. "When the system was shut down... I didn't know if they were still alive."

"...You never told me..." He muttered, slightly upset at the secret but not too surprised that Rose kept this from him.

"...It was okay. I was able to forget about them... But then John asked and everything came back." She scoffed. "I'm an idiot... I kept it all to myself, even though I knew it was going to come haunt me someday..."

Jack kissed her hair. "...Not following your own advice, hm?" His voice was soft, he wasn't making fun of her.

Rose sighed. "What about you? Isn't there something you want to tell me too?"

He flinched. Of course there was. There was a lot going on in his head at the moment. He was fascinated by the fact that he had seen a working family, people who weren't thrown together with force, but had met coincidentally and had children like any other normal family would have had. He had been surrounded by dysfunctional relationships for so long, deep down in his mind he thought that no family could be truly happy. And yet there it was. A kind hearted mother who didn't judge anyone, and a father who loved having fun. John and His grandfather had played for hours earlier.

His own family now consisted of Rose and John, and two more people. Possibly Rose's siblings too. It was so new and a little scary too, yet he felt that he had no right to be scared. Rose was the one who was scared. With good reason. Jack had seen pictures hanging on walls, three girls playing with toys. All three were blonde and one of them was Rose, but Jack hadn't been able to tell who of the three was her. It was the same with all the other pictures. Rose's mother had showing him that the big picture above the fireplace was Rose. But he couldn't see any similarity. That girl with braces and long blond hair did look nothing like his wife.

"They ruined your life too..." He eventually said. "The patriots I mean..."

"We all were victims of the system... You, me, John, My parents." She sighed. "Sunny, Hal, David... Even Meryl. Everyone." A smile ghosted over her face, one that was invisible in the darkness of the room. "But we're taking back what they left. You getting in touch with my family, is the greatest gift I could have ever asked for, Jack. Thank you."

She kissed his lips, smiled when he cuddled her tightly.

"For a long time I thought I had no real family... but I just didn't see all the people around me..." He whispered after a moment. A scoff. "Everyone was trying to protect me and I trampled over their feelings because I didn't understand."

"...I didn't understand you either at first..." Rose admitted. "You were just a guy I was assigned to... You know what? I hated you with all my might in the beginning." She laughed silently. "And now look, we're sleeping in the same bed, have a wonderful son, and I wouldn't want to trade this for anything in the world. For nothing."

He fell silent, brooding over her words. So she had hated him. He wasn't surprised. He had been an emotional wreck even back then, he had just been able to hide it better.

"...If you hated me... what made you change your mind?"

Rose didn't need to think, she answered immediately. "There was a day where you came to my apartment but I wasn't home yet... and you stood in the rain for god knows how long, shielding the flowers you had bought, with your jacket..."

He gave off an annoyed sound. "I got the worst cold after that..."

"But the flowers were safe." Rose smiled. "...When I saw you freezing in the rain you looked like a normal guy to me. Not someone I was assigned to, but someone I really wanted to spend my time with."

"This is... embarrassing." He mumbled into her hair.

"I found it cute." She cuddled him tighter. "You've changed a lot since I first met you-"

"Is that a good or a bad thing?"

"Let me finish." She sighed. "You know, after all you've been through, taking all of that into account- All the things I know about-, I think you're one of the strongest people I've ever met."

"Except for that part where I lose my mind and go on a killing spree..." He muttered silently, full of disgust.

"Did you know that every human being has this instinct?"

"They do?"

Rose nodded. "If you bother someone long enough they will attack eventually. It's natural. Self defense. Some are more violent than others. It's all for self preservation."

He furrowed his brows. "...You think... it's normal that I have this... this _thing_ in me?"

"Yup. It only comes out when you feel threatened or when someone bushes the right buttons, right?"

"I guess?..." He muttered, not liking the turn of the conversation.

"It's perfectly fine." She ran a hand through his hair. "You know what makes you different from the others in that aspect?"

"No?"

"You are aware that you have this instinct inside. And you can control it to a point."

"Now you make it sound like something good."

"If you wouldn't have _it_ you wouldn't be here, right? Self preservation is something that sits deep inside everyone. Actually, I've seen it a lot. In a lot of different people." She whispered. "You're not the only one who has it. Everyone does."

He growled silently. "It's still nothing good."

She kissed his cheek. "You've suppressed it so much that you're afraid of it now... when in truth, it's just a part of everyone's life."

"Then why is it so easy for people to make me snap like that?"

"Because that is the reaction you learned when you were just a kid. I've told you how things that happened in early childhood can affect people their whole life."

He grimaced, noticed that the room was changing colors. The sun was rising. Chased away the dark feelings and made way for another day of surprises.

"I love you no matter what, Jack." Rose eventually whispered.

He didn't want to argue anymore, wanted to forget the conversation and just do normal things without dwelling on it. How did this conversation turn from families to this...?

 **Chapter 17**

Chapter Notes

This story is dedicated to my grandma who lost the battle with a lot of health issues and cancer two years ago... I am out of it today, the story is probably not great.

Rose had been a little taken aback when her parents had decided to show John the central park, without his parents. Yet she enjoyed walking through the cold early afternoon breeze, cuddled up in a warm jacket complete with scarf, hat and gloves. Silently she sipped the hot chocolate she had gotten in a coffee shop and kept glancing up at her husband. The man had barely said anything since they had left the apartment of her parents. He was silently holding her hand and stared straight ahead as Rose lead the way.

They had walked past the empire state building, tons of shops they used to frequent back when they still lived here. Most of them didn't exist anymore. And then Rose stopped, laughed silently and looked up at the building they stood in front of.

"...Federal Hall." Jack muttered with a raised eyebrow. "Why are we here?"

Rose shrugged. "I wasn't paying attention."

He shook his head and turned away from the building. Rose sighed, turned away as well and they walked down a different path. They both had thought there would be more people around, yet the streets were quite empty for New York standards.

"What now?" Jack asked. He sounded impatient.

Rose threw her empty cup into a trashcan and tried to think of something. She had no idea what they were doing here, had just appreciated the surroundings and the tall buildings. She had almost forgotten how tiny she sometimes felt when she looked up at them.

"We could head back." She replied. They had been out for more than long enough and she was freezing by now.

Jack flinched when a snowball hit his head. The snow rand down his neck and into his shirt, making him shiver. When he turned a boy about John's age laughed nervously.

"I'm sorry!"

Jack only nodded, tried to get the snow out of his hair. Rose was staring at him, smiled slightly. He sighed, took her hand and they began to head back into the direction they had come from.

"John asked if Sunny and Hal could come visit us for new year's" Rose muttered after a while.

He scoffed. "As if."

"I know..."

"Hal never even talk to me anymore. All emails I send get ignored."

"And you still wanted to invite them for Christmas." Rose noted.

"I don't get it, that's why." He growled.

Rose hugged his arm as they crossed the street. "Why do you think he would ignore you?"

He grumbled silently. "How should I know?"

"You are thinking of something, aren't you?" She pried.

He hung his shoulders. "I'm not expecting him to like me or anything... It's just..." He struggled to find the right words, growled in anger.

"You think he dislikes you for some reason..." Rose concluded.

He opened his mouth to refuse. Hal hadn't been a very close friend anyway, but he a good person, took care of Sunny.

"I don't know..."

Rose dragged him into a café and picked out a table on the far corner. When they settled down, Rose's gaze focused on her husband. "There's something else bugging you, right?"

Sometimes he hated it when she read him like that. "Hal used to invite us sometimes, you know?"

Rose nodded.

"I wonder why he-" Jack stopped himself, eyes wide with realization.

Rose frowned slightly but didn't get an answer. "Jack?"

"He stopped after Snake died..." The man's voice was barely above a whisper now.

"He probably needed time." Rose assumed.

Jack silently nodded, watched as Rose stood and walked up to the counter. A few minutes later she sat down again, looked out of the window for a moment.

"Wonder what he'd say." Jack chuckled.

"Hm?" Rose turned back to him, confused.

"Probably something like 'Hey kid, stop being so gloomy.'"

Rose smiled at him at that. "What would you say to him?"

Jack snorted. "No idea."

The coffee Rose had ordered was brought to the table and while she absentmindedly stirred, she kept glancing at her husband. He looked so sad today, ever since he had woken up he was sort of out of it and sad looking. Maybe that was why her parents had decided to take John out so they could to something for themselves.

She reached over the table and gently took his hands hinter hers. "What's up with you today...?"

He almost instantly hung his head, shook it. "Your...mother..." He was struggling with words again. "She... she said it was okay to call her 'Mom'..."

Rose wasn't surprised at that. In fact she had expected it. She had quickly learned that everyone called her mom, but she knew that to Jack this word had a meaning that no one could understand.

"I don't get it..." He muttered. "...It's just a stupid word but it threw me off..."

She held his hands tighter, didn't want to interrupt. He was in a conflict right now, struggling with words and whatever he wanted to say.

"...I... couldn't tell her... that I never really had a mother..." He whispered. "I...was afraid that she won't understand... or that she asks why... What if they hate me if they know?" He looked at her, a deep frown on his face, eyes sad and Rose thought she saw them glistening for a second.

"Jack..." She gently said. "You don't have to tell them anything if you don't want to. I can't promise that they will understand... But I know that they won't judge."

He nodded silently. "...Is... is it really okay to call her that?"

Rose smiled brightly. "Of course it is. My dad called my mother's mother 'Mom' too. It's perfectly fine."

He shook his head. "...It feels weird."

"You don't have to call her like that if you don't want to. Just use her name."

He nodded, leaned against the backrest of the chair. He felt exhausted, tired. Something so simple, and yet it felt as if it was the most forbidden thing in the world.

 **18th December**

Three letters, one simple word. And he couldn't do it. He wasn't sure what kept him from saying the word. There had never been a person he called Mother before. Never. Maybe it was the fact that saying it meant to accept the fact. Everyone had Nicknames or codenames...

"Jack?" He heard Rose ask, her hand moved over his under the table.

Jack wished he would have known that family dinners could be this awkward. The past days he was able to talk himself out of it because he didn't need to eat. But today Rose insisted that he at least sat with them. John was enjoying the food, happily demonstrated it by swinging his legs under the table, occasionally hitting the legs of his father.

"It's nothing." He lied. His glance shifted to John for a heartbeat and Rose knew it was better not to pry now.

She continued to eat, still holding his hand below the table.

When John's feet hit the man's legs again Jack shot the boy a warning glare and John ducked with a sheepish grin as he tucked his legs behind the legs of his chair.

Rose was talking to her parents now, they laughed on occasion. Jack didn't follow the conversation and was more than confused when Rose suddenly looked at him.

"Isn't that right, jack?"

He smiled nervously, resisted the urge to rub his head. "I'm sorry... I didn't listen."

The mostly grey haired woman smiled warmly at him. "Rose told me that you are a good ice skater?"

Jack flinched, glared at Rose. Why was she bringing that up?! "...I'm not really-"

Rose smirked as she lifted her glass and sipped the water. "Remember the last time we went?"

He did because it had also been the first time. And that had been over a decade ago. Rose had pestered him for weeks and eventually he had given in, let her have fun. He had never tried it before either, but once he had gotten a hang of it, it had been fairly easy.

"Can we go ice skating?" John then asked. "I've never done that before!"

Rose's father smiled at that. "I think that's a good idea."

John grinned at his father, then continued to focus on the food.

Jack sighed, tried to forget about it. Maybe he could still find some sort of excuse. Maybe they didn't let cyborgs in.

They continued to eat in silence, Jack wasn't sure where to look at, until John's feet hit him again. "John..." He muttered silently.

"Sorry." John whispered. "I'm just so excited."

"I know." Jack smiled tiredly at the boy.

Eventually they were done with eating and John quickly left the table to continue playing with the few Lego figures he had brought and spread all over the living room. Jack decided to clean up the kitchen, mostly because it was a habit to do it. After a few moments Rose's mother entered the kitchen, smiled at him and opened a drawer to look for something.

"Can I ask you something?" She said after a moment.

"Sure." He replied, closed the dishwasher and turned around to her.

She was holding a small box, set it down on the counter. "What are you working as?" She was casual about it, just curious.

He held his breath. The dreaded question. If he said he was unemployed at the moment, she'd probably think lowly of him. If he told her what he usually worked as she would thing even worse things of him... dread filled his chest as his gaze wandered to the ground. He couldn't tell her any of that.

"...It's... complicated." He muttered silently, hoped to avoid this topic somehow.

She smiled at him, put a hand on his arm. "I'm just curious. I didn't ask to judge." She tried to reassure him.

"...I'm looking for a job at the moment." He said after a long pause. That was about as truthful as he could get. Anything more and she would probably change her mind.

Her smile grew and she rubbed his arm. "That's fine. I'm sure a handsome guy like you won't have trouble finding a new job."

He hung his shoulders. Now it was clear that this woman had no idea about how cyborgs were treated. He appreciated that she hadn't bugged him about it yet, though. Rose's father had asked a few questions, but they weren't as intrusive as they could have been. Most of them focused on the technical aspect.

"I wish it would be that easy." Jack sighed.

"It's not?"

He shook his head. "I don't really have many skills..." he almost scoffed. The only thing he could do pretty good was killing people. "And nobody really wants a cyborg to work with them anyway."

The woman grumbled slightly. "How did it happen to you if I may ask?"

He looked at her, then shook his head. "...I can't... talk about this."

"It's okay if you don't want to tell me, that was a pretty intrusive question." She admitted.

He forced a smile on his face, silently left the kitchen and headed upstairs to the bedroom. Now he was forced to think about it. It was fine as long as no one asked how it happened. Everything else was okay. Answering questions wasn't that big of a problem, and yet... when that question came up he was forced to remember. He couldn't stop it either. His mind would force him to see the darkness, hear the voices and the noise. He could even feel the pain if he concentrated on it. The smell.

Nausea washed over him. "Stop it..." He hissed at himself. It wasn't the right time to think about it.

"Jack?" Rose asked as she entered the room.

He didn't react to her, couldn't. If he moved now he wouldn't be able to force his thoughts back, it took all of his concentration.

The door was closed and Rose appeared in front of him. He tensed, shaking slightly. Hands clenched around his arms, lips pressed together into a thin line.

"What's wrong?" Rose asked, crouched down in front of him. She put a hand on his shoulder, pulled it away immediately when he flinched violently. "Jack, what did my mother say to you?" Concern filled her voice now. She had heard them talking, but didn't concentrate much on it.

"Nothing." He pressed through his clenched teeth.

He was feeling sick to the bone, a sensation so human it almost made him laugh.

"Jack..." Rose pried.

He shook his head, took in a shaky breath.

"Look at me..."

Once more she shook his head, flinched violently when Rose sat down next to him and wrapped her arms around him. He didn't try to struggle out of her grip though. Rose rubbed his back, still not having any idea what was going on. She doubted he would tell her.

The Christmas lights on the windowsill illuminated the room in a mix of bright colors, took the seriousness away for a moment as Rose watched them.

"She asked why..." Jack whispered then.

Rose knew immediately what he meant. It was definitely about him being a cyborg. He didn't talk about the why or how. Never did. Every time someone asked he refused to answer and changed the topic.

"...I can't..." he hissed.

"It's okay, Jack." Rose tried to reassure him. "You don't have to tell her or anyone else."

"They keep asking."

"I know. People are curious... but you don't have to justify it."

He nodded, his hair brushed against her cheek as he did. "They think I had a choice. They... don't know how it's like..."

"It's pretty ignorant to ask this out of the blue." Rose muttered. "...I actually told her not to bring it up..."

He lifted his head a bit to look at her. "You did?"

She nodded, then sighed deeply. "I guess that only made her more curious... I'm sorry, Jack."

He rested his head on her shoulder, sighed. "...It's fine. Being like this... I'm used to it." He shrugged. "...It's just... when they ask why."

"It makes you remember?"

He nodded.

"What do you remember?"

He tensed, shook his head. "...I don't want to talk about it..."

"Would it help if you wrote it down?"

"What's the point?"

She held him a little tighter. "It can help sometimes."

"That's ridiculous."

"If you say so." Gently she kissed his hair. "I'll talk to my mom..."

He nodded once more, let himself fall into the pillows on the bed when Rose left the room. There was a stack of paper next to the bed John had claimed for himself, tons of colored pencils too. What if writing it down actually did help?

He scoffed, turned to the other side and stared at the wall. He had other things to worry about. What was he going to do about the ice skating?

 **Chapter 19**

Chapter Notes

I dunno anymore... this last week before christmas is sort of hard...

John was skipping happily through the snow, threw snowballs at his parents and occasionally his grandparents, squealing happily. They were walking for a while now, Jack and Rose already seeing the place they were heading. They knew their way around the city, after all.

"He's so lively." Rose's mother smiled after a while. "Just like you when you were little."

Rose smiled back at her, laughed silently when John stopped and fired a snowball at her. She managed to avoid it and crouched down to make a snowball herself. Jack ducked away to avoid the snowballs his son now threw at him, threw himself to the side and managed to hit the boy's jacket with a snowball.

"No fair! You dodged!" John laughed, got hit in the face with a snowball then.

The boy grimaced, wiped the snow away and glared at his grandfather, who laughed heartily. "Gotcha."

Rose smiled happily as they slowly progressed to the location they had intended to go.

John squealed happily when he realized where they had been headed the whole time. "Ice skating!" the boy grinned, skipped through the snow to hug his parents.

"Mommy's going to teach you." Jack muttered.

Rose grimaced. "You know you're better at this." She muttered and lightly hit him in the side with her elbow.

John titled his head, looked at his father in slight disbelief. "Really?"

The man sighed, picked his son up and sat him on top of his shoulders. "Let's find out?"

When Jack walked up to the short Queue Rose felt happy and relieved. Jack hadn't shied away from the curious looks at all. Not once. Maybe he hadn't noticed them, too focused on John. She was glad. The past few days felt so much more calm than usual. It was probably the different location. Even though this had been their home some time ago.

"I had my own prejudices about Cyborgs..." Rose's father then admitted. "But seeing him changed my view a little."

Rose sighed. "...I know there's a lot of bad stuff going on with Cyborgs... But..."

"He's a good man." Rose's mother said then.

Rose fumbled for a response, then decided to let it go. It wasn't her place to tell them. If Jack wanted to do it, he would do it on his own. There was one more thing she had to tell her parents though.

"Please don't ask him why he's a cyborg. He really doesn't like this question."

Her mother nodded. "...I was curious. He seemed to be feeling bad after I asked..."

Rose sighed, hoped her parents would understand that it just wasn't a good question to ask.

Her father pointed to the queue then. "We'll lose them in the crowd if we wait longer.

Rose didn't need long to find her husband and her son, Jack was tying the shoelaces of John's ice skates, explained how to do it and let John do the other. When Rose walked up to them Jack smiled nervously.

"...I threatened the guy..." He whispered and nodded over to a man who distributed ice skates to the people. "Didn't want to give me any. Said I'd probably be too heavy."

Rose grumbled silently. "If they can stand this guy, there's nothing to worry about." Rose nodded to a man who was quite big and still managed to use the ice skates in a rather effective way.

Jack sighed, growled. "I don't know."

"Come on, It'll be fun." Rose grinned, put on her skates and waved her parents over.

John was already waiting for his father, called out to him and eager to get onto the ice. "Dad! Come on!"

Jack shook his head slightly, then headed over to John. The boy was already on the ice, clinging to the rail. His father needed a moment to get used to the strange way of moving, but it wasn't as bad as he had thought it would be. He caught up to John, lowed his head a bit to speak to the boy.

Rose joined them, feet sliding away from under her, but Jack caught her before she could fall. She laughed at it, watched her parents go past them, holding their hands and not giving a care in the world about all the people. It was sort of cute. Now if she managed to stand properly she could try that too.

Or she cold punch that one guy in the face who kept staring over at them.

 **20th December**

Jack and Rose were sitting on the couch in the living room, he was focused on a book while she stared at the TV, enjoying all the time she had with her husband while John was doing things with his grandparents. There was so much the boy wanted to see, and she was grateful for not having to go outside. During the ice skating she had been stupid and sprained her ankle. It wasn't too bed, but annoying anyway.

When Jack let the book sink, Rose looked up at him. He was leaning against a stack of cushions, had fallen asleep. Rose chuckled silently but did wonder why he was so tired all the time. The jetlag couldn't have affected him that badly. Even she had been fine pretty fast. Was he just stressed out?

She shrugged, cuddled up next to him and allowed herself to take a nap as well.

She snapped awake when John barged into the living room. "Mom! Dad! Look!" He shouted happily, squealed and expected both of his parents to be as excited as he was.

Rose sat up quickly, frowned at what the boy was holding. "A dog...?"

John nodded eagerly. "Granny said she sometimes takes in dogs when people are going on vacation!"

Rose sighed in relief, even smiled and pet the dog's head after John had walked up to her.

"Dad's asleep..." John noted, his happy expression was chased away by a deep frown. "But I yelled..."

"He's just exhausted, let him sleep." Rose smiled reassuringly, yet in her mind she was going through a checklist. Was this normal? He could have slept badly last night. Maybe the day had exhausted him.

"Okay." John turned back to his grandmother, carefully let the dog on the ground. "Mom, can we walk the dog?"

"John-" Rose was about to argue when her mother interfered.

"It's okay, we just picked him up he hadn't had a walk yet."

"Mom walks dogs all the time." John grinned. "Can we go?"

Reluctantly Rose gave in, stood slowly and dragged a blanket over Jack's shoulders before she kissed his hair and gently ran her hands through it for a second. Usually he would have woken up from that. He seemed fine though, breathing was normal he didn't look any different and his face as relaxed as it could get. Maybe he just really needed some uninterrupted sleep.

When Rose left the apartment with her son and the dog, the sun was already setting, tinting the neighborhood in a darkish blue, the snow glistened in the street lights.

John was holding the leash, talked the world away with the dog. Rose briefly wondered why she even went along, then she reminded herself that this wasn't New Zealand and this was by no means a tiny neighborhood where everyone knew each other. John's best friend had a dog and they often walked it together, Rose wasn't worried to let the two walk through the neighborhood. Here it was different. New York was a dangerous place in certain areas.

Once they returned to the apartment Rose rang the doorbell, was let in by her father. John ushered the dog into the elevator, needed to tiptoe the reach the button for the fourth floor. Rose smiled. The boy was so independent already, it was surprising her all the time.

"Mom?" John asked then as the doors closed and he crouched down to pet the dog. "Can we move here?"

Rose lifted her eyebrows in surprise. "Don't you like it at home?"

"I do... But... Everyone is so far away. And I really don't like planes..."

Rose crouched down to be on eyelevel with her son. "You used to like them a lot."

"...I know..." the boy mumbled, avoiding her eyes.

Rose put a hand on his shoulder, "Look at me." She said gently. "Tell me what's going through your head."

John hung his shoulders and looked at his mother. "We don't get snow on Christmas... and..." The boy trailed off.

Rose took his hand as they left the elevator, the dog sat next John in the stairwell now. "You know you can tell me everything."

"...You won't tell anyone... right?"

She smiled reassuringly. "No one. I promise."

A smile ghosted over John's features but was quickly replaced by sadness. "...Dad has to leave again when he finds a new job... right?"

Rose smiled sadly. "We don't know that yet. This time he could get lucky and find a job that is closer."

John chewed on his lip stared at the polished marble floor. "...I don't want dad to leave again..."

"I know, sweetheart." Rose wrapped her arms around her son and held him tightly. "I don't want him to leave either... But there isn't much we can do about it..."

"It's not fair..." The boy blinked tears away, sniffed.

Rose picked him up, entered the apartment of her parents. Her mother was concerned immediately. "Did something happen? Oh , Johnny you're crying..."

"I'm not..." The boy mumbled and turned his head away, then struggled to be let down by his mother and stormed into the living room and crawled under the blanket over his father.

Jack opened his eyes a crack, frowned in confusion at the boy. "Hey, what's wrong?" he whispered, gently ruffled the boy's hair.

"Nothing!" John quickly said and hugged his father tightly.

 **Chapter 21**

Rose enjoyed the silent morning with her parents, Husband and son still asleep and overall it felt really peaceful. Moments like these were rare. She was constantly worried about something, yet now the only worry she had was when she should wake John. Jack would probably get up soon. She almost dropped her bun when Jack appeared in the kitchen. His hair was a wild mess, face pale, he was trembling , clung to the doorframe.

Rose was on her feet before she realized, almost fell over her chair as she ran up to him, totally forgetting about her parents. "What's wrong?" She asked quickly, Ready to catch him should he fall, something was going on, and this time it was not a cold. She wanted to growl.

"'s ran out..." He hissed, slowly lowered himself to a sitting position on the floor to prevent himself from actually fainting.

"What?" Rose asked quickly, not quite sure what he meant.

When he nodded to the fridge she realized. "Jesus, Jack!" She hissed angrily. "Don't scare me like that!"

He chuckled weakly, leaned against the doorframe as she opened the fridge and took one of the clear packages out she had stored in there when they had arrived. Rose had no eyes for her parents who were staring at the two in slight horror and some sort of curiosity. Sure, she couldn't blame them for it. They likely had never seen this before.

"Are you clear enough to do this on your own?" Rose asked her husband firmly, held out the package to him.

He frowned, fumbled with his shirt, managed to snap off a button and let his hands sink in frustration. "...sort of. But It's hard to move."

"That's your fault for letting it run out, idiot." She scolded him. "Damn why are you always so reckless?" She tried to sound angry but relief was clear in her voice.

He smiled at her, let her open his shirt and didn't give a damn about the weirded out looks of Rose's parents when his wife replaced the nutrition pack.

"There." Rose hissed after a moment and closed his shirt again. "That's the third time you let this happen, my god, they aren't that expensive. You're scaring the living daylights out of me with this."

"Not really my fault this time." He sighed. "The warning showed up way too late. Need to get that fixed..."

Rose nodded, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, before she hugged him tightly. "Idiot..." she whispered."

"All yours." He whispered back and wrapped his arms around her. "What would I do without you." He smiled.

Rose laughed silently but chose not to answer when she moved away from him again and turned to her parents. Both had gotten quite pale, neither of them dared to speak.

"It's okay." Rose tried to reassure.

Her father found his voice first. "...You gave us quite the scare..."

Jack slowly got back to his feet, movements still slow and somewhat sluggish. He almost looked drunk. He sat down on a chair at the table, waited for Rose to sit down again before he spoke. "That wasn't my intention..." He muttered. "I'm sorry."

Rose's mother shook her head with a smile and took his hand. "You will be okay, right?"

He nodded, blushed in embarrassment. "...I really didn't mean to scare you."

"How are you so used to this...?"

Rose shrugged. "You get used to it after a while... This is nothing compared to all the other things that happened..."

"Rose..." Jack warned silently.

"I... really want to know why you are a cyborg. Forgive my curiosity..." Rose's mother said silently. "I know it's terribly rude to be so interested in this..."

Jack knew she wasn't trying to make him feel uncomfortable, she was just incredibly curious. Not that he could blame her. John had asked far more strange questions that any other person had ever dared to ask. But John was just a kid and with him he could make everything sound harmless. He looked at Rose who gave him an encouraging nod, but instead of answering he just left the table.

"...I made him upset, didn't I?" The older woman asked.

Rose shook her head. "Give him time. There's still things he hasn't even told me."

"Doesn't he trust you?" His father asked.

"It's not a trust issue." Rose reassured. "Talking about it makes him remember things he doesn't want to remember."

Just when Rose's mother was about to reply, Jack came back, this time with a few sheets of paper in his hands. He placed it on the table, stared at the ground. "...That's... some of the story..."

"You wrote it down?" Rose asked in disbelief. She hadn't actually expected him to do it, much less show it to anyone.

She got a small nod as answer, grabbed his arm when he turned to leave again. "Stay."

"Rose-"

"Stay." She repeated.

"But-"

"Sit down."

Reluctantly he sat down again, anxiously stared at Rose's parents and wished he would just fall into a bottomless pit. Why had he ever thought this had been a good idea?

"You have a really nice handwriting." Rose's mother commented after a moment.

Jack tensed, he didn't want to talk about any of this. Rose's hand holding his didn't help at all either.

After the older woman put down the pages, she adjusted the glasses she was wearing and stared silently into space for a few moments. Rose's father then picked up the stack of paper and began to read through it as well. Jack had clenched his fists so tightly that he had crushed the pen he had been holding. He didn't care at the moment, ignored the blue ink leaking onto the table cloth.

Why had he done this?

Rose's father took off his reading glasses, set it on the table and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Jack felt his cheeks burn and quickly looked away. "...I... I didn't mean-"

Rose's mother stood, and for a second Jack thought she would yell at him or something, but she just smiled, hugged him tightly and kissed his cheek. "You're a brave man." She said firmly. "The other two don't even bother to send Christmas cards even after knowing us for so long."

Jack tried to struggle out of the hug, really didn't want to talk about it. When she finally let go of him he saw Rose reach for the paper and snatched it away from her. "No." He hissed.

"Jack?"

"I'll... tell you... later..."

He really didn't want to talk about any of this. Why was John still asleep? Why had he given them the paper? Why had he even written it?! Awkward silence surrounded them for a few seconds, then they continued to act as if nothing had happened.

Jack found it weird, but was also relieved that they weren't as creeped out as he feared they would be.

 **Chapter 22**

John curiously peeked into the hallway when he heard the front door open. Maybe his mother had forgotten something before she went out? He was sitting on the carpet in the living room, playing with his Lego and looked to his father who had stopped trying to put together the bricks he was holding when a man appeared in the living room.

"Who is that...?" John asked silently and he slowly inched closer to his father. He wasn't particularly afraid of strangers, yet this man had obviously entered the apartment without having a reason to do so, at least in John's eyes.

"He had a key, must be someone they know." Jack whispered back.

"Mom, dad?" The man asked loudly now, shoved a dark haired boy into the apartment and looked around. The man frowned when he noticed John and Jack, his expression changed to something between dislike and pure anger.

"Who are you?" The man growled, stormed up to them.

John clung to his father in an attempt to hide from the stranger. Slowly the man stood, towered over the brown haired stranger by at least half a head.

"I could ask you the same." Jack muttered.

The stranger took a step away, but his expression remained unchanged. "You have no right to be here, whoever you are."

Jack opened his mouth to reply, when he saw Rose's mother walk up to the man. "You shouldn't give a first impression like that, Ray. He's Mary's husband."

Instead of introducing himself to the taller man, Ray just turned away. "So the bitch finally settled down after fucking her way through various businesses? Heard she made decent money after leaving for good."

Rose's mother gave off a surprised squeak when Ray's collar was suddenly grabbed and slammed into a wall. Not enough to damaged anything, but still strong enough to frighten the man into shutting up. "This 'bitch' happens to be my wife, so you better shut up." Jack growled silently.

The man's eyes widened and he nodded slightly. "A-alright."

Jack let go of him, but kept glaring. Something about that man put him on edge, and it weren't his words.

"Dad..." John mumbled silently, half hidden behind his father and threatened by a toy gun held by the other kid.

Jack's immediate reaction would have been to disarm the kid. Thankfully he could stop himself in time, had automatically shoved John behind him though. The unknown boy apparently thought himself to be victorious and made quite a show of it.

"Ray, do you really need to give the buy toys like that?" Rose's mother sighed.

The man shrugged. "It's just a toy, Mom. There's nothing bad about it."

"He pointed it at my son." Jack growled.

The man laughed. "He was just playing."

When the boy aimed the gun at Jack, it took less than a second for the toy to be gone from the boy's hands. The boy stared up at the tall man. "Give it back that's mine!"

"Man, what is your problem?" Ray complained.

"You shouldn't give your kid toys like that."

"Well at least I'm raising my kid to be a man, not like yours. Look how he's hiding. What a wuss."

Jack would have punched the man right then and there if Rose hadn't returned. She was holding two paper bags, headed straight for the kitchen with them and walked into the living room once she had put the bags down.

"Oh you two met already." Her smile fell when she saw the toy gun clenched tightly in Jack's trembling hand.

"Is everything alright?"

"Peachy." Ray grinned as he turned to his sister.

Rose's smile never reached her eyes. She glanced at her husband, instantly knew what his gaze seemed to tell her.

"What have you been doing all the time little sis?" Ray asked, voice full of disgust. "Wanted to show off your high-tech- robopet and that little spawn of hell of yours? Is that even his kid? Heard you fucked so many people, you wouldn't even know."

Rose knew she needed to find a good response now. Jack was furious, she didn't need to look at him to notice that. "How about you and your wife, Ray? Heard she left because of your terrible temper. You were always a guy who tried to make other's feel bad for things you couldn't accomplish."

The man stared at her for a moment, opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again. Jack then handed him the toy gun with way more force than necessary, almost made him stumble. He left the living room with Rose and John, settled down in the kitchen.

Rose watched her husband from the corner of her eye,. The man was staring at the table fists and jaw clenched, trembling. She could hear her mother yell at her brother and closed the door to the kitchen. She didn't want to hear anymore.

"I should have expected that he hasn't changed."

John walked up to her, hugged her tightly. "...I don't like him..." he whispered.

"He's difficult to get along with... Granny's giving him a mad scolding now." She ruffled the boy's hair, smiled sadly. "What about Jake, did you like him at least?"

John shook his head. "He pointed a gun at me!"

Rose began to understand why Jack was so mad now. "Maybe you can show him some of your toys later and he forgets about the gun."

John nodded, suddenly determined. "Okay!" The boy let go of her, left the kitchen. It didn't take long for the two boys to chase each other around the apartment. Rose hoped they were playing and not actually chasing each other, but she was focused on Jack now.

She sat down on the table next to him, pulled him close and ran a hand through his hair. "What are you thinking about?"

"I don't know..." He muttered. "I wasn't thinking at all. The kid pointed that toy at John and ..." he sighed. "I couldn't... stand seeing that..."

Rose nodded, then sighed. "Try to get along with him anyway... alright?"

"I didn't do anything..."

"I know..." She kissed his hair, sighed once more. "It'll be okay. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I felt threatened by a kid..."

"What did you think he would do?"

"I didn't think..." He hissed. "I just... Why would someone give a kid a toy like that..."

"He probably found it cool and wanted to have it." Rose shrugged. "Remember, John had that toy sword."

He took a deep breath. "That's different...-"

Both looked up when something crashed into the kitchen door and loud howling could be heard not a second later. Rose jumped off the table, carefully opened the door to see John behind it, holding his face, tears running down his face and blood dripping through his fingers.

"He... fell and crashed into the door..." The other boy muttered, he looked concerned and sort of unsure.

Rose picked John up and sat him onto the counter next to the sink, Jack had already taken paper towels to clean the blood off the floor.

"John you need to take your hand away..." Rose said silently. She inspected his face once she did. The boy had bitted his lip and bumped his nose. His wasn't broken, and the bleeding had almost stopped too. She put a cold clothing onto his neck anyway and carefully cleaned the blood out of his face.

"Looks worse than it is." She informed both her nephew and her husband, also John to calm him down.

John looked away from her, seemed sort of embarrassed. "...I tripped because I stepped onto my sock."

Rose smiled. "That happened to me all the time when I was a kid."

"Really?" John's face lit up at that.

"Yup."

The boy grinned at that, climbed off the counter then and continued to play with his cousin.

"He's already made a new friend." Rose smiled at Jack.

"Because he's good at that."

"You're not bad at it either, Ray just isn't the best material to work with... I'm ashamed for having such a brother, really."

"So he's always been like that..."

"Pretty much. Just ignore him when he talk shit."

Jack scoffed. "I'll try... he called you a bitch."

"He said worse when we were kids. Bitch was nothing."

"Sounds tough."

Rose shook her head. "I just beat him up when he did."

Jack lifted his eyebrows. "You fought with him?"

She shrugged. "All the time. Eventually he stopped when he realized that Mom was on my side."

"You have a strange family..."

She smirked. "Look who's talking."

He snorted, leaned in to kiss her. "Could be worse."

"Yup."

 **Chapter 23**

Rose eyed the blonde twins in the kitchen as if either of them would turn into a beast and eat her alive. They were talking, staring, laughing. Liz tried to keep a lid on what June said, but Rose knew her sister only waited for the right moment to attack. Jack had left the lower level of the apartment so quickly when the doorbell rang, Rose couldn't help but think he fled.

After the previous day she didn't need to guess why.

When June noticed her standing at the door, Rose took a deep breath and brace herself for whatever assault she would get. June had always been a shallow person.

"So did your _'husband'_ tell you do change your looks? You look terrible like this. What happened to your long hair? Don't you like the color?"

Rose stood her ground, looking for an answer. The words hurt, but she didn't let it show. "Heard you've got a nose-job. Didn't you like your nose?" She eventually shot back.

Liz retreated, obviously didn't want to be caught up in this.

"At least I didn't disappear for a decade and then suddenly show up with a kid and... and this 'thing' for a husband."

"Jack is _**not**_ a thing." Rose hissed, fist clenched and having a hard time to keep her emotions under control. First her brother, now her sister. She hoped Jack wouldn't hear any of this.

"Just look at you. You're so attached to a machine. This is ridiculous! So why did he get it done? To be better than humans?"

"June!" Rose yelled. "He didn't-" She stopped herself.

"Didn't what, huh?" the sneer on her sister's face made Rose furious.

"You know what June? If you have a problem with him, tell him straight into his face!" She shouted now. Arguments usually didn't rile her up this badly. She could argue for days with clients and never let one bad word escape, but this was on an entirely different level. She was involved.

"I sure as hell will do that." June hissed and stormed past Rose.

Rose stood in the kitchen for a moment longer, hadn't noticed she had been trembling the whole time. Tears burned in her eyes. Both because her sister didn't want to understand and because now she had dragged Jack into it even though she wanted to keep him out of it.

She couldn't protect him all the time, she knew that better than anyone else, but that didn't mean that she didn't want to try to keep him from getting assaulted by people that now counted as family. When she left the kitchen she saw June storm down the stairs, a frightened look on her eyes. "Don't ever think I'd accept a monster like this!" She screamed, rushed past Rose and slammed the front door shut as she stormed out of the apartment.

Rose felt numb, frozen to the spot. What the hell was going on here? Her family had always been together when they really had to, and yet she felt as if she had lost her place. Her mother was looking at her, surprised, not quite grasping the situation. That was when Ray stood.

"Look what he did! He doesn't belong here."

Rose was too shocked to answer. Jack had done nothing. If he had June wouldn't have ran down like that. Slowly as if moving through water she made her way upstairs. Jack was sitting in the corridor, head rested on his knees, surrounded by darkness.

"Jack...?" Rose asked silently, almost stumbled over her own feet as her legs trembled so much. Slowly she sat down next to him. He as trembling too. "What did she do..."

"Nothing..." he muttered. "Nothing different from all the others... using words as if they're knives."

"I love you." She whispered. "Whatever they say, I don't care."

"I know." He muttered.

"What did you tell her?"

He sighed. "Told her to leave me alone or I show her how much of a 'monster' I can be... guess that frightened her..."

"She deserved that." Rose hung her head, shook his slightly. "I was really naive... I thought we could come here, have nice holidays and everything would work out fine... But... now it's probably the second worst Christmas I ever had..."

"The second?"

She nodded. "The other time... It was after we just go back together you know? John was so happy to go to preschool... and everything like that."

He remembered. "...We fought the whole night."

"I can't remember why." Rose admitted.

He smiled. "Me neither..."

"And in the morning after I got out of the shower..."

A scoff escaped him. "The body had malfunctioned and I passed out on the carpet..."

She nodded. I panicked... all of this was so new to me..."

He leaned against her, took her hands. "I think that Christmas wasn't that bad. The 'nurse' looked nice."

Rose blushed in embarrassment. "...I was afraid I'd break you. I was so afraid... "

"You never told me." He said in slight surprise. "The body was pretty sturdy. Was just the insides that liked to do what they want."

"Yeah, I know that." She smiled for a second but got serious then. "We'll leave after Christmas." She stated. "I would leave right away, but John would be disappointed..."

Jack nodded. "...At least your parents are nice."

"Liz is okay too. It's just the other two..."

"Wonder if there's a chance to at least get along with them. I can't do much about it, I guess."

Rose nodded. "I think they're angry because I disappeared..."

He wrapped an arm around her and held her tightly. "They should be glad you're there. I certainly am."

"Thank you." She kissed his lips, saw someone come up the stairs but didn't care much.

"Ugh." A male voice came from the staircase. "... Dinner is ready... god how can you kiss this... thing"

Rose grabbed Jack's collar as he tried to pull away and held up the middle finger into Ray's direction.

"Go fuck yourself, Ray." She hissed as she pulled away for a second.

 **Chapter 24**

Rose was in the kitchen with her mother and Liz, the mood somewhat tense. Jack had left the apartment in a rage Rose hadn't seen in a long time. She wasn't sure if he'd come back tonight. Ray and June had simply taken it too far. John had thankfully not realized that his father had left because he was angry.

Still, she was worrying about Jack. What was he doing? Where was he? She couldn't reach him, phone shut off. She wanted to leave, take John and Jack and just go back home. This wasn't worth all the stress. Why couldn't her siblings just live with it, just for the holidays...

"Mary, are you okay?" Liz asked after a moment.

"No." Rose hissed back. "No, I'm not okay."

"Can I do something?"

Rose shook her head, almost flinched when Ray and June appeared in the kitchen. "Mary, we thought about something."

Rose lifted an eyebrow. "And what is that?"

"We think it would be better if you left him." Ray said casually, as if it wasn't a big deal.

"Can't you let this go already?" Rose's mother said firmly.

Rose was the youngest of the four, often forced to do what the others had wanted. Maybe leaving her family hadn't been such a bad idea after all. Right now she was beyond angry. Furious even.

"You don't know nothing about him!"

"We just think it would be better for you." Ray muttered.

Rose growled angrily. "Are you jealous that I have a working relationship because both of you are divorced?!"

"It's a Cyborg! They don't belong into normal families! That's like owning a tank as a pet!" Ray yelled back now.

Rose hadn't realized she had slapped her brother until she felt the tingling in her hand. She certainly wasn't going to apologize for it. "Why do you hate him so much?" She whispered, her voice cracking. She swallowed the tears. Why was she about to cry? She knew it would have been hard to get them to accept Jack, and yet... It had been naive, so naive to hope they would like him.

"He's creepy." June eventually said. "Couldn't he have get done his whole face too? Or was there no money left for that?"

Rose wanted to slap her too. But she figured that would get her nowhere. She needed to tell them something now.

Her mother cleared her throat. "You two need to stop with this. Or it will be you who leave."

"Mom you can't do that! You should throw out this monster!" June immediately yelled.

"Jack didn't get it done because he wanted or needed to!" Rose finally yelled. Her siblings turned to look at her, both frowning in confusion.

"...He was kidnapped, and they experimented on him." Rose almost whispered now. She still hadn't heard the full thing, just simply refused to tell her, even after promising it. She didn't blame him, whatever had exactly happened, it must have been traumatizing.

"...You'd see that he is alright... if you gave him a chance." Rose hissed. "But if you're constantly setting him on edge, it's no surprise that he snaps. You're doing this on purpose."

Her siblings were quiet, staring at Rose.

"Jack hates to leave the house because a lot of people react like you two do. You think he likes being like this? You think he finds it fun to be the reason we're always struggling with bills? You think he wants to be stared and yelled at and thrown out of stores just because he is a cyborg? He can't even pick his own son up from school because people constantly question if he's John's father. You two are the worst. The people he tries to avoid. He knows what people talk behind his back."

Rose hung her shoulders, was exhausted. And Jack still hadn't returned. Where was he? Dinner would be ready soon, but Rose wasn't sure if she would enjoy it. The previous day Jack had skipped it again. That was probably for the best.

Ray left the kitchen, June lingered for a while longer. "...Mary, do you really think this man is the right person?"

"Let it go." Rose hissed. "We're together for eleven years. We've been through things you can't even begin to understand, I am absolutely sure that he is the right one."

"Alright..." June muttered, and followed her brother.

Rose slumped down on a chair, shook her head to herself. Would they finally leave him alone now? They hadn't be as angry about her own changes as they had been about what Jack was. She almost jumped when the doorbell rang. Liz went to the door and it didn't take long for Jack to walk into the kitchen.

He looked tired, sad. Rose didn't care, barely noticed that she had jumped off the chair and hugged him tightly. She hadn't even realized how afraid she had been that he would leave for good.

"Rose?" He asked silently, wrapped his arms around her. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head. "Don't do this, please..."

He sighed. "I needed to get some space... this wouldn't have ended well otherwise."

Rose nodded, reached up to him, gently ran her hands over his cheeks and through his hair. Not much later they all had settled down at the dining table once more, this time Jack was sitting with them. It was an awkward silence, no one dared to make eye contact with him except for John who kept smiling happily. The boy was oblivious to anything that had happened, he had been playing with his cousins. It was better that way.

Jack stared at the filled plate in front of him, unsure. He could if he wanted to, but he wouldn't need to. Were all dinners on Christmas eve this awkward? He had no idea. With his family it was always enjoyable, happy. Even funny at times.

"Jack?" Rose's father suddenly asked.

The man flinched, surprised that anyone still wanted to speak to him. "Y-yes?"

"Heard you were looking for a new job."

Jack's eyes darted to Rose's siblings, already preparing himself for comments and accusations, but none came. "...Yeah... I have no luck-"

"I know someone who looks for a guy who could work in the warehouse of his store."

Rose then looked at her husband, smiled and nodded to encourage him. "Can't hurt to try." She whispered.

Jack frowned. "Are they okay with..."

Rose's father smiled brightly. "He said anyone is fine, as long as they can carry heavy stuff. It's only temporarily though, but he said the payment would be decent."

"I'll think about it..." Jack muttered, felt the stares of the others on him.

Something told him that it was a bad idea.

 **25th December**

Chapter Summary

We're done! Oh my... i really enjoyed writing these. They#re always a nice practice and although i struggle in the first few days it becomes routine quite fast. Maybe i do them next year too :3

Thank you for reading all of these and thanks for all the comments and kudos! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Rose woke up when she heard the bathroom door slam shut. John grumbled in his sleep, turned around. He wouldn't wake up. Jack wasn't next to her and it didn't take her long to put together that Jack must've left for the bathroom. Why, was beyond her. For a shower maybe, but why at this hour? Nightmares. She figured. It was rare that she didn't wake up if he had nightmares, but she assumed it was one of these times. Slightly concerned she pulled the blanket away and slipped out of the bed.

The bathroom door was unlocked, and so she pressed the handle down slightly and peeked into the room. Jack was standing in front of the sink, hunched over it, water running. He was cursing silently, growled at himself for his stupidity. That was when Rose noticed that his nose was bleeding quite badly.

"...Jack?" She asked silently, startled him anyway.

He flinched visibly, didn't look up at her. "It's nothing." He tried to reassure her.

Rose entered the room completely now, shut the door behind her. "This doesn't look like nothing."

"It's embarrassing." He told her, scoffed silently.

"Don't say that. What happened?"

He sighed in annoyance. "Don't laugh." He warned. "...When I got up I kind of hit my nose at the nightstand."

Rose tried hard not to laugh but she couldn't hide a small smile.

"This is so stupid." He hissed and fired the tissues into the trashcan.

"John hit his nose a few days ago too." Rose shrugged.

"Yeah, but he fell. I was just being an idiot."

"Would you call me an idiot if this happened to me?"

"Of course not." He muttered, then paused and sighed.

"See?" She smiled and ran a hand over his back, yawned silently. "We're just in time for breakfast."

When they headed downstairs a few minutes later, both still dressed in pajamas, they were greeted by Ray. Rose grabbed Jack's sleeve as the man was about to turn around again. Reluctantly he stopped moving and stared at the dark haired man like a tiger eyeing its prey. Rose could feel the tension between them.

"Look... uh..." Ray muttered, "We kind of... had a bad start..."

Jack scoffed, crossed his arms. Did this guy expect he would forgive him for all the cruel things he had said?

"What do you expect me to say?" Jack muttered after a moment.

Ray shrugged. "I just..." He didn't dare to look Jack in the eye. "I said things I shouldn't have."

"But you meant what you said." Jack shot back. "I have a good idea about why you hate me, and I can't deny any of it."

"Look-" Ray muttered, lifted his hands as if trying to reassure the taller man.

Jack sighed and looked out the window. "Don't apologize if you don't mean it."

Ray stayed silent for a moment. "What I said about your son when Jake pointed the toy at him... That wasn't fair. John's younger, he doesn't understand that it was just a game, right? But you didn't have to take the gun away. It's just a toy."

Jack shook his head in slight disbelief, then took a deep breath. "John isn't stupid." He growled. In fact, John was probably smarter than both of his cousins together, but that could have been biased.

Rose then stepped in between the two. "Enough. Ray, I suggest you don't say anything about my family anymore. Nothing."

Ray rolled his eyes and shrugged. "Fine."

Rose nodded, then went back to the kitchen were Liz June and her parents were already sitting, eating breakfast. Jack had no idea what sort of Christmas tradition they had, if any. When he was at home with Rose and John, John would usually be awake at the most ungodly hours and be super excited about the presents. This year though, John seemed to sleep in, as well as the other two children.

Jack hadn't seen much of the girl, she was shy and refused to talk to anyone. He had forgotten her name again.

After breakfast John and his cousins slowly came downstairs, all yawning and looking quite tired. John instantly headed towards his father, hugged him tightly.

"Merry Christmas..." He mumbled tiredly, almost fell asleep again.

Jack smiled and ruffled his hair. "Merry Christmas to you too."

What surprised Jack the most was that the other boy had no room to at least say good morning, he was already sitting at the tree, staring at the presents. At least he didn't bother to hide how much he wanted them.

John eventually pulled away, hugged his mother, then his grandparents. The young girl walked up to him, gently poked his arm and said something to him. John smiled and took her hand.

"It's okay!" He said firmly and pulled her into the living room.

It didn't take long for the kids to be too excited to think about anything else. Jack didn't give a damn about any traditions anyway, mostly because he didn't know any. The other's didn't seem to care about any of that stuff either.

Rose's mother eventually gave the go ahead and the Kids started harvesting through the presents. That was when John pulled out two paper scrolls both tied with a neat bow and gave them to his parents. "Granny helped me with the bow..." He mumbled in embarrassment.

Jack and Rose opened the ribbon, both each found a drawing of themselves on the paper. "Thank you!" Jack smiled brightly, hugged the boy. "It's great!"

John giggled, got a similar reaction from Rose, and then finally went to find his own present under the tree. When he had found it his smile had been so bright, it must've hurt.

"Yours is the smallest!" his cousin then laughed. "Look at mine! It's so big!"

John shrugged, surprised the boy hadn't torn into the paper yet. John carefully opened the paper, blinked in surprise when he realized what it was. The Lego set he had wanted so badly. The boy knew he had never asked for it, because he knew it was too expensive.

"Dad... how did you know...?"

"Santa and I had a long talk?"

John laughed got up to hug his parents, then flinched when he heard his cousin howl behind him. "I didn't want this!"

John turned to look why the boy was crying, but couldn't see a reason why. He had gotten a set of nice looking clothing, and a few toys. John saw no reason to complain at all. Pepper was silent, but the smile on her face showed that she liked the drawing books and the two toy cars she had gotten.

Jack then stood, handed the girl a small package and even gave Jake one. He even had one for the rest of Rose's family.

"Jack when did you-" Rose asked in surprise.

"...I had nothing to do wandering around in New York... So I thought I could try to... It's just small things... Your sister helped me hide them..." He laughed.

Rose smiled, surprised and amazed. Her smile dropped when Jack handed her a small package. It was store bought, she could see that at the wrapping paper, But she couldn't guess what it was.

"Jack?"

"Open it."

Rose carefully opened the paper, almost dropped the present when she realized what it was. "Jack! Where'd you find this... I thought..."

"I thought the store didn't exist anymore either... But I know you liked the perfume... You still have the bottle even though it's been empty for years."

She shook her head, hugged him. "...You're a jerk, spending this much money on everyone..."

"...It's okay. I made sure it didn't get too expensive."

Rose nodded, then handed him a present as well. "Roy sent me this a while ago."

"...Roy? Why?" He asked in surprise, opened the paper. It was a stack of three unlabeled DVD cases.

Rose leaned in closer and whispered into his ear. "...I recorded a lot of things... Wanted to salvage certain moments, but also because I knew you wouldn't be able to witness your son growing up... I couldn't find them when we moved back together... Roy said one of his maids found them not too long ago." She tapped the casings, "You're holding John's first five years in your hands."

He was speechless and surprised, couldn't tell her how much this meant to him. "Let's look at them later."

He nodded, still surprised.

"Alright, I want you all to be completely silent now." Rose's father then sad as Rose's mother walked in with a box. "There was a lot of arguing in the past days, and I am really ashamed for the behavior of my own children." She said. "I feel the need that I have to apologize for them. Because apparently my husband and I did some mistakes in their upbringing."

"Mom..." June muttered, "That's not-"

"Quiet." Rose's mother hissed. "You've disappointed me. Jack is such a nice guy. Has he ever done anything to you?"

Jack looked away, didn't like to be the center of attention. Everyone was staring at him and then Rose's mother even handed him the big box she was carrying.

"When I read what you wrote down... I wanted to help. Rose told me that you have a lot of things to deal with and have a lot of things on your mind, so my husband and I thought, this might be of some use for you.

She took off the lid when she made sure Jack was holding the box, Smiled brightly when she saw the baffled face of the man. Inside the box was a white dog, Jack had no idea what kind of dog, but the canine immediately jumped at him.

"...but we-"

"It's all taken care off. We'll pay for all expenses." Rose's mother promised. "Her name's Ivy. She's 2 years old, fully trained."

"You're insane..." Rose muttered. "Mom... we don't-"

"A dog! A dog!" John squealed. "Mom! A dog!"

"...A dog." Jack muttered in disbelief. "Alright. A dog."

Rose shook her head. "But the house... and..."

"You told me they wanted a dog." Her mother shrugged. "We'll pay for everything." She repeated.

"So the black sheep gets the dog." Ray eventually muttered. "How ironic."

"Ray..." Rose warned. "We agreed on something."

The man shrugged. "Who cares?"

John pulled on Jack's shirt then, looking sort of angry. "Can we walk her? Please?"

Jack wasn't eager to stay with the others, but still sort of surprised. He didn't believe any of this. Thanking Rose's parents felt like a dream, some sort of daze. Only when the cold air outside assaulted him, he slowly realized what was going on.

"I really want to punch my brother... They should have named him 'Sting-Ray'." Rose growled angrily.

"But a sting ray is just an animal..." John muttered.

Jack smirked then. "Metal Gear Ray."

Rose stopped in her tracks, then burst into laughter.

What a Christmas this was. Maybe it even was sort of fun. And a dog. There was a freaking dog now. Rose still wasn't sure what to think about it, but she didn't mind it too much anymore.


	2. 2016

**1st December**

It was a day like any other. Silent, soft rustling of book pages, the slight clicking of controller buttons, silent sound effects. Neither of them wanted to admit it, but boredom had finally sunken in. The days had gotten shorter and with it any activity that should have been watched died down to a minimum. On some days there was info that was worth looking into, usually though, nothing interesting happened all day. They had settled in a small apartment and they really didn't feel the need for anything else.

The controller clicking stopped when a steaming mug was placed into cold hands. Coffee and pizza seemed to be the only thing that kept them going these days.

"You think there will be something happening soon?" A silent voice asked in slight anticipation.

"It's the calm before the storm, Hal." A heavy body settled down next to the younger man. Cold hands grasped the blanket that hat him covered the whole time.

Hal huddled closer to his friend, pulled his legs up to his chin to keep the cold out. "We should turn the heater on." He suggested silently.

The reply was muffled by the coffee mug Snake held to his lips. "Then I have no excuse to get this close to you."

Hal laughed silently at that. "Why would you need an excuse?" The reply to that was a low grumble that could have meant anything. Hal left it at that and just enjoyed the company of his friend; and the warmth. It really had gotten cold now. The seasons had changed so fast but with being as busy as they had been neither of them had noticed much.

"It's kind of boring, isn't it?" Hal eventually asked. There was never much to talk about these days. Snake wasn't interested in video games and Hal didn't care much for the newest weapons.

"I thought you wanted some quiet times." Snake stated, still sipping his coffee.

"I know, but…" Hal trailed off, not sure how to finish his sentence.

Snake sat the mug down, a small smirk playing on his lips. "You got used to it."

"No!" Hal protested immediately, but admitted defeat right away. "Yes- I mean maybe. We've moved around so much, always with our lives on the line- Yours more than mine but…"

"You got used to it." Snake repeated.

Hal sighed in defeat. "Probably… I missed the quiet life… but now I miss the action."

"Thought you had plenty of action in video games." Snake teased.

Hal chuckled. "Maybe if my opponent wasn't a computer."

Snake lifted an eyebrow at that and carefully grabbed the spare controller as if it could break by the slightest touch. "One game."

Hal smirked knowingly and nodded. "Sure." One game became two and two became four until it was late in the evening and Snake remembered that he needed to call an informant back who had delicate information about a client they had worked for before.

Hal was content with the few games he had played with his friend; after all, it was a very rare occasion to even get the other man to play any game with him. It was easier to convince him to watch anime, yet snake usually fell asleep during those.

When Snake settle back down next to him he looked concerned. "Seems like they got in trouble."

Hal sighed. It was always the same. He already prepared his mind to lose yet another informant. It wouldn't be the first and not the last.

"Anything new though?"

"Told me to stand by in case of trouble. Seems like they'll get the necessary information soon."

 **2nd December**

Morning came too early for Hal who was thrown out of bed by the frantic ringing of Snake's cell phone. Its owner was nowhere to be seen, but considering that it was this early in the morning, Hal assumed it was rather important and grabbed the device. When he accepted the call the first thing he heard was gunshots. Then the voice of a man who sounded a lot like the informant for a certain case they had been on.

The man was dying, Hal just knew it. When they called like this, they were _always_ dying. He knew he could do nothing now, just patiently wait for the information this man was going to share.

"They found me." Hal heard him hiss. Briefly he considered doing something to help him, but the past few times showed him that if help even got to them, it was always too late.

Where was Snake in a situation like this?

"I won't make it-" The gasping voice was something that pulled at Hal's heart. He had never met the man in person, but still felt sort of attached. People dying because the wanted to help was such a terrible thing.

"I-It's alright." Hal tried to calm the man. "Is there anything you can tell me?" He hated to do this, this man was dead in a few minutes, and he needed to keep this about their work. What he really wanted was to comfort him.

"They don't have an MG."

Hal nodded to himself, sighed in defeat. All this work for naught and now their informant was dying without any reason. The engineer swallowed the lump in his throat, whispered a silent, "I'm sorry." But he never got a reply.

Minutes passed and Hal was still listening to the gunshots and yells, even after the phone of the informant had obviously fallen to the ground. He hated dealing with death; it always seemed to follow him through everything he did. Everything he wanted was to help, and so many innocent lives were lost.

There still was another informant for a different case; Hal hoped that they would at least survive that.

Over all this morning couldn't have started worse, and Snake was nowhere to be found either. At least that seemed to solve itself when the front door unlocked and the smell of fresh bread and coffee filled the small apartment. Hal couldn't feel happy about it.

Snake carried paper bags into the kitchen, set a coffee mug on the table next to Hal and settled down on a chair. Light colored eyes focused on Hal.

"They got one of our informants." Snake stated, while looking at his friend.

Hal bit his lip and could only nod. It felt wrong to be sad about a person he had never known, but those dying for a cause like this seemed wrong too.

"They know the risk, Hal." Snake sighed and placed a hand on his friends shoulder to comfort him. "

"What about the other…?" Hal asked then. That informant was young, his voice had suggested that even though it was distorted by some voice altering device, it was neither male nor female, but Snake had determined pretty early on that this person had to be a man.

"I don't know." Snake sighed deeply, a sad smile on his lips. "Come, eat something. If we mourn every informant like this we'll never get to do anything."

"You got something to do?" Hal asked hopefully. Something to do meant distraction.

Snake placed a newspaper on to the table. "Seems like we got a new job."

Hal barely contained his relief that the days of boredom seemed to be over when he picked up the newspaper and noticed various letters had been marked with a pen. A coded message. He almost tipped his chair over when he grabbed pen and paper and started scribbling down the various letters he found.

Snake had placed a plate with breakfast next to him and watched him do his work, while he seemed to be lost deeply in thoughts.

"I'm worried." Hal muttered while he scribbled down various letters and numbers that made no sense to Snake at all.

"Now?" Snake asked in slight disbelief.

"As you said, this is the calm before the storm… and this message makes no sense to me."

Snake slowly stood and leaned over Hal's shoulder to take a better looks at his notes. He soon came to the conclusion that he couldn't help his friend at all and settled back down on his chair. "Leave it be. Maybe it was a joke."

Hal looked up at his friend, eyes wide in surprise. "You think… someone's on to us?"

"Not yet. Don't let your guard down though."

Hal nodded slightly, he barely even left the apartment these days. Mostly because he dug up all the necessary info and put it all together for Snake, but also because he was afraid.

The engineer sighed and leaned back in his chair, surprised when the hand of his friend gently clasped around the pen he was holding. It took him a few seconds to realize that Snake was moving the pen over the paper. When he let go and Hal lifted the pen off the paper, he saw a tiny image, somewhat crippled and scrawled but Hal got what it was supposed to look like. A tiny heart.

When he looked up at snake again, all he got was a smug smile before Snake's face disappeared behind his coffee mug.

 **3rd December**

Hal froze while doing the dishes when the doorbell rang. No one had ever come to their door. No neighbor, no stranger. He peeked into the living room, frowned at Snake who seemed just as surprised, maybe a bit more collected about it. When Hal made no move to open the door, Snake stood from the couch, placed the book he was reading aside and slowly walked through the living room.

"Who's there?" he asked cautiously. You could never be careful enough, and with all they had been through it was better to be safe than sorry.

When no immediate reply came, Snake prepared for an attack, then a silent female voice answered to his question. "My name is Miller, I am your neighbor-"

Snake frowned deeply now, neck hair standing up. The name was quite common, it was nothing to be surprised about, but he didn't like it much. "What do you want?" Snake asked harsher than he had intended.

"I made too much cookies, I am sharing them with the whole house. Maybe, if you want some-"

Snake turned to Hal who tilted his head as if trying to think of an answer. "It's rude not to… right?" he muttered more to himself than to his friend.

Snake slowly put a hand on the door handle and carefully opened the door just enough to see the face of an elderly woman with white curls and a warm smile. She was holding a platter with neatly stacked cookies and over all didn't seem like a threat at all. Snake knew better than to be fooled by that.

"They're fresh." The woman smiled, gave the plate to the brunette man and squeezed his hand lightly when he took the plate.

"Thanks…" Snake muttered silently, still not sure if he could trust this woman. Seconds later he had closed the door and put the plate on the dining table. He wasn't going to touch it. Could the rats eat it and die.

"You think they're poisoned?" Hal asked silently when he walked up to his friend to look at the gift they had been given.

"I'm not thinking anything. I just don't want cookies."

Hal carefully removed the cover over the plate and took one of the cookies. "They smell like normal cookies."

"That's the point. You wouldn't even know."

"She's our neighbor, Snake."

"I don't like her."

Hal sighed in defeat. "You don't even know her. Have you ever talked to her?"

"I don't talk to anyone in this house except you."

Hal shook his head, broke the cookie he was still holding in half and revealed a chocolate filling. "So there was something inside." He commented with a smile and bit into the cookie.

"Tastes like a real cookie too."

"Fine." Snake grumbled and snatched the other half from Hal's hands.

"We should thank her properly for this."

"With what?"

Hal shrugged. "I don't know… some self-made cake maybe?"

"I don't know how to bake."

"Me neither… but they have these things in stores where you just add milk or something."

Snake looked at him skeptically. "And you think we'll be able to do this without turning the kitchen into a battlefield?"

"Only if you don't throw it at me like you did with the bread I made."

"You mean with the bread you _tried_ to make. It was as hard as a rock."

"You could have killed me with it." Hal muttered.

"I didn't, get over it."

Hal gazed at the cracked tile in the kitchen, then turned back to Snake. "I think it'll work out fine if we do what the instructions say."

"I take your word for it, Hal."

 **4th December**

Snow was settling on the balcony, muffling sounds and brightening the early evening. Hal was still busy with the newspaper they had gotten, not getting any further with the message. By now he assumed it was a prank, but until he was completely sure he didn't dare to put it away. Snake was busy on the phone, had only briefly told Hal that he was talking to one of their informants who had a lead on something Hal and Snake had looked for in almost two years.

Hal glared at the shaking pencil in his hand. Why was he so nervous anyway? Chances were that the informant couldn't find it anyway. But that hope was crushed when Snake let the phone clatter onto the dining table and settled down on the chair with a somewhat stressed sigh. He blew the imaginary hair out of his face and shook his head.

"He found her."

"Her?" Hal echoed in confusion.

"The kid."

The pencil fell out of Hal's hand. "O-Olga's child?"

Snake just nodded. "He wasn't the one with the newspaper though."

Light colored eyes focused on Snake. "So it's a girl?"

"I guess so. He wouldn't tell me where exactly. Just to 'stand by' and have a place ready for her."

"You think he's pulling something himself?"

Snake shrugged. "He seemed pretty reckless, considering the last few times I talked to him." He grabbed his cigarettes and opened the balcony door, cold air gushing in, making Hal shiver. "It's a miracle he's still alive." Snake muttered after he had lit the cigarette and leaned against the window from the outside.

"Does this guy have a name or anything?"

Snake shook his head. "He wouldn't even give me a codename."

"There aren't many who knew about Olga's child." Hal muttered to himself. "You think the girl is alright?"

Snake turned around and looked at his friend through the window. "She seems to be alive, that's all he told me."

Hal picked up the pencil again, now it was shaking more than before. "He wants to bring her here?"

Snake walked back into the living room after brushing the snow off of him and closed the door. "Apparently. We'll see what we'll do when she actually shows up here."

"You want to-"

Snake shook his head. "You think we could provide a good environment for a kid?"

Hal hung his shoulders in defeat. "We're doing dangerous work, the apartment is small and there's no way we'll stay here for longer than a year. On top of that we're both guys who…"

"Who what?" Snake lifted an eyebrow with a small smirk on his lips.

"What would an outsider even call this… this… relationship?"

Snake chuckled and pulled his chair closer to Hal. "Does it matter what they think?"

"No… not really. But-"

Snake grasped Hal's free hand and kissed the cold back of it. "If they have a problem with it, they can go to hell. Life's too short to be worried about things like that."

Hal stared at his friend, his pale face now showing a significant red on the cheeks. "Y-yeah."

Snake chuckled silently. "What are you blushing for?"

Hal hung his head in defeat, gently let it sink down on snake's shoulder. "You did it out of nowhere again."

"Didn't you tell me it's boring when I always ask?"

Hal flattened himself against his friend, when he realized he had lost this argument. "I'm sorry."

Snake gently flicked the side of his head. "Don't be sorry."

"Sorry-"

"You're a lost cause, Hal." A warm arm wrapped around the back of the engineer, the answer to that was two arms wrapping around Snake.

"You too, Dave."

 **5th December**

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Hal was going to walk a hole into the carpet if he kept pacing like that. Snake shook his head at his friend and returned to read the rubbish the news paper was talking about. He didn't believe any of the crap they wrote down there but it distracted him from the incident that caused Hal to pace like that. He would be lying if he said he wasn't nervous as well, however all his experience taught him how to keep it level and well hidden.

"What if something happened?" Hal asked for what felt like a hundred times now.

Snake didn't even look up from the news paper at this point. "He said he'll be here soon."

"That was three hours ago!" The younger man snapped back. "He could've at least messaged us!"

They were both anxiously waiting to hear about the informant who had the information of the child they had been looking for, for so long.

Snake sighed, straightened the crumpled edges on an article he had read at least ten times now. "You know how this is. Sometimes it's just not possible..."

"But-"

"Otacon…" Snake muttered now, was about to lecture him again about how he really needed to keep things together when the younger male interrupted him.

"What if something happened?"

Snake grumbled in annoyance. He was getting fed up with Hal's behavior. Of course something could have happened. But without a way to tell if that was the case or not, he decided to keep a cool head and just be ready in case things got serious.

Five hours later Snake was nervously tapping his foot on the carpeted floor of the apartment. Hal had retreated with a cup of coffee and played video games to keep his head together. By now he was sure that something had gone wrong. There was no message, no life sign and certainly no one at their door.

It was dark outside now, their apartment only lit by an old lamp in the far corner of the living room and the TV screen with Hal's game. Snake stretched and grabbed the packet of cigarettes, was half way to the balcony when there was a rather urgent sounding knock on the door.

Snake froze and Hal paused the game, the noises of his game dying down instantly. Out of a habit Snake grabbed a gun and inched closer to the door. After that neighbor had showed up, he just assumed that no one else could be friendly around here.

"You think that's him?" Hal whispered.

Snake shrugged as he put one hand on the door handle and ripped the door open to point the gun at a person's masked face. A small child was fidgeting, wrapped in a blanket and obviously not happy about being there.

Before Snake could say anything the child was shoved into his arms and the person turned around to leave. That was when Snake noticed a bleeding wound on the man's side. It wasn't patched up properly, probably done in a hurry. In a flash he had grabbed the man's arm and pulled him inside, then shut the door.

"What are you-!" The man hissed, voice distorted likely due to the mask. It was the same indistinct voice Hal and Snake had heard in the message sent over eight hours ago. The person was definitely male, although his figure could have suggested otherwise to the untrained eye. The mask covered the entire head, eyes almost invisible. No wonder the child wanted to get away from him.

"Were you followed?" Snake asked, towering over the other, even though their height difference was insignificant.

"No." the male hissed back, the mask distorting his voice enough that Snake had to guess what the man had said.

Hal had already procured the first aid kit- the blood dripping to the floor was hard to miss- and switched it for the child Snake was still holding. The child, unmistakably a girl, stared at him with wide brown eyes, not quite sure if she should be scared or not. Her hair was a very light blond. No doubt it was Olga's child. How old was she? Three? Four?

He freed her from the blanket she was wrapped in, frowned at the thrown together and not quite fitting clothing. Hal had went out to hastily grab some clothing they could give a child and had it packed away neatly in their closet just a day ago. There was blood on the girl's face, but he soon realized that it wasn't from the girl but rather from the man who had carried her.

"What's your name?" he asked after he sat the girl to the ground, smiled at her and tried to take away her fear. If she was afraid at all. She looked curious, but her eyes kept wandering to the man still standing at the door.

"You're staying with us now." Hal informed her.

The girl's brows knitted together in confusion. She had understood the meaning of these words and Hal felt heartbroken at her longing gaze to the man at the door. Said man was currently wrestling Snake away from him as the older male tried to dress the wound to his side.

"No." The girl said firmly and quickly scampered over to the man that had brought her here. She clung to his leg and both he and Snake froze at the action.

"No." She glared at Hal who had stood to walk over to them.

"I explained already." The unknown man told the girl. "I can't take you with me."

"S-s-sunny, not sta-staying." The girl protested.

"Sunny…" the man crouched down next to her, suppressed a pained hiss and clutched his side. "It is dangerous to stay with me, I already explained this to you. You understand that, don't you?"

"No!" Sunny grabbed his jacket as tightly as she could and refused to let go. "S-Sunny… sta-stays with Jack."

Snake took a step back when the man visibly flinched at the name. He then lifted an eyebrow and turned to Hal who frowned in confusion.

"Jack?" Snake echoed.

Sunny huddled herself closer to the young man, as if that was going to change anything. The man himself sighed in defeat and removed the mask. When it clattered to the ground Snake shook his head with a slightly amused smirk and Hal's eyes widened in sudden realization.

"Why the disguise?" Hal asked silently as he slowly came closer, no longer wary of the young man. Jack certainly was no one he feared.

"They're looking for me, in case you've forgotten." Jack hissed and carefully pried Sunny's small hands off of him.

The girl glared at him, grasping his shirt again with no intention of letting go of him. "We're safe here, Sunny." He tried silently. "I told you about them, they're friends. Otacon has Videogames."

That seemed to convince the girl to take a better look at the TV, while Snake was busy to help Jack back to his feet who yelped in pain when he was dragged over to the couch. "How'd that happen?"

The older man asked while he took scissors from the first aid kit and cut the shirt into ribbons.

"It's just a flesh wound-"

"You're still bleeding all over the place." Snake grumbled and ripped the makeshift bandage off the wound.

Jack hissed but didn't say any more when Snake gazed at the wound. "And you're absolutely sure no one followed you?" the older male asked as he poked at the wound.

"The bullet is out already- Stop it!" Jack hissed and clawed at Snakes hand to get him away from the injury. "I took care of those who followed- Don't worry, Sunny didn't see any of it."

"Sunny. Is that her actual name?"

Jack shrugged. "That's the name she told me."

"Sunny is Sunny." The girl protested silently while she fumbled around with the controller of Hal's play station. Said person was eyeing her as if she was a bomb that could go off any second.

Snake nodded silently, proceeded to patch his friend up in a more professional way and slapped the back of his head. "You're reckless, kid."

Instead of replying, Jack just looked away and took the scolding without having any reaction to it. Snake suddenly felt guilty. He hadn't seen him like that before. Of course Jack had lost his cool a few times, but a few comforting words had been enough. Snake wondered what has going on now.

"You need a place to stay?" Snake tried, hoped his guess was right.

"I'm fine."

"Jack h-hasn't e-eaten anything." Sunny helpfully informed the two men that were about to become her foster family. "N-not even ch-ch-cheese-bu-burger."

Snake caught the glare Jack gave the girl and whacked his head again. "See, she knows what's good for you."

"She doesn't know anything." Jack growled.

"And here I thought having a kid would make people more understanding." Hal muttered under his breath and flinched badly when Jack suddenly jumped to his feet, made the first aid kit clatter to the ground and its contents spill over the carpet, then grabbed the mask and turned around to the three, face red in anger and eyes glistening with tears.

"Jack-"

"You don't know **anything**!" he shouted at them, gripped the door handle and was already halfway out the door when Snake grabbed his arm and forced him back in with a strength that had the younger man stumble into the man's arms.

Snake froze when Jacks hands clawed his shirt and barely suppressed sobs escaped him. "You don't know anything." He repeated, this time silent and drowned in tears.

Snake kicked the door shut and wasn't quite sure what to do with his hands when he rested them on the younger male's back in a failing attempt to console him. Helplessly he looked over to Hal, confused and overwhelmed with the situation. He could deal with temper tantrums and rage fits, but this was a little too much. He knew Jack was more emotional than he should have been, yet this reaction seemed so out of nowhere that he couldn't piece it together at all.

Now that he had his arms loosely wrapped around the younger man, he also noticed that he seemed significantly thinner than he used to be. Just what had been going on in the time they hadn't spoken to each other? The few times they had contacted each other was to relay information, there was never time to talk about private things. Not that they did that much anyway.

"Sunny-" Hal muttered, mostly to break the silence, "Do you want to eat something?"

Snake watched the two leave for the kitchen- Sunny must've agreed to the offer. With a heavy sigh he patted Jack's back, mostly to get him to stop clinging to him as if he was the last thing he could grab before falling into an abyss. "If you wanna talk about it, kid-"

"No." Jack growled, quickly let go of the man.

Snake felt something close to pity rise inside him. The kid looked like he needed some sleep, food wouldn't hurt either. The blue eyes looked so pale and pained in the reddened face.

"You're not leaving until you ate something." Snake then declared.

Jack scoffed. "I brought the girl here. My job is done."

"I don't know what happened, but blaming yourself will not change anything." Snake tried.

The younger male smirked humorlessly. "You don't know anything." He repeated yet again.

Both men turned when Hal left the kitchen with a steaming bowl of the soup he had thrown together earlier. He wasn't great at cooking; that was all he could do. Snake was already complaining about it, but this bowl wasn't for the older man.

Jack was about to refuse the food, but when Snake glared at him, he just took it and walked back to the couch. That was when Snake noticed the limp of the younger man. He wondered why this hadn't caught his attention before but decided to leave it be for the time being.

Snake and Hal then went about their business, which was to get to know Sunny a bit better. They quickly learned that while Sunny had trouble speaking she understood the world around her to a point at which Hal wasn't sure anymore if this girl really was only four years old. She had quickly located Hal's laptop and was researching things Hal had never even heard about.

Proud, yet a little intimidated he sat down next to Sunny and talked her into trying one of his games. The girl was occupied with that for twenty minutes, then she went back to research.

"Sunny, how was the place you were at before like?" He asked silently, unsure about the whole thing. Jack certainly wasn't going to tell him anything. The man had been silently sitting on the couch, staring holes into the wall for about an hour now. For a moment Hal had thought something was wrong, but the man was fully aware of his surroundings. Maybe he just had a lot to think about.

Instead of replying with her own voice Sunny typed into a text document. Her fingers flew over the keyboard at a speed that even surprised Hal.

' _I don't know. Jack gave me a blanket.'_

Hal frowned. "And before he showed up?"

' _I don't know.'_

The scientist quickly decided that he wasn't going to get a decent answer like that. He decided to wait a little longer before he asked her again. Meanwhile he gave her the clothing he had bought specifically for her and showed her the bed Snake had put together just for her. Sunny went to bed without saying anything, but Hal had the strange feeling that she wouldn't stay there.

Things did settle down at eleven in the night, Jack still sitting on the couch, empty bowl in his hand, unmoving. When Snake grasped the bowl to take it to the kitchen the pale hands tightened around it and a blond head lifted to stare at him in confusion.

Snake let go of the bowl and crouched down, resting one hand on the other male's shoulder. "Stay here, Kid. For the night, get some sleep."

The blue eyes casted to the ground again. "I can't."

Hal silently cleared his throat to direct the focus to him. "It really is okay. There's enough space for one more person-"

"You wouldn't want me here at night." Jack then muttered, his words having some sort of resignation to them.

"Nightmares." Snake concluded. "Just rest a bit, you look terrible, kid."

Snake hid the triumphant smile that wanted to cross his face, when Jack nodded and handed him the bowl. As he took the object to the kitchen, Hal had walked back into the bedroom to get a pillow and a blanket and moved them to the living room. Snake fumbled with the package of cigarettes in his pocket, really needed a smoke. That was what he told himself. In truth he was curious about why Jack was acting the way he did. The kid wasn't the most talk active when it came to personal things, yet him being so unusually distant seemed to have some other, bigger reason.

On the other hand the kid had brought the girl here. Safe and Sound, maybe a bit shaken up. Snake would have lied if he had said that he didn't like the company of an actual child. Children had a different approach to the world, were more open minded and generally friendly. Of course there were always exceptions.

Deeply lost in thoughts Snake finished washing the dishes and headed for the balcony to smoke. It was raining, the streets below illuminated by street lights and headlights of cars. A few windows were still lit but overall it was dark and unusually silent. He liked nights like that. Every time it rained it felt as if it washed away some of the cruelty of the world, before it would appear again worse than ever before.

He took a drag on his cigarette as he peeked back into the living room, watched the rare guest on the couch. Snake smirked to himself. It hadn't taken five minutes for the young man to fall asleep. His eyes wandered over to Hal who was now sitting on the ground with his laptop as his usual place on the couch was occupied.

Snake took his time with the smoke, but even that had to end and so he returned into the living room, left the balcony door open for a moment longer and he walked past Hal and brushed his fingertips over the brown hair of the man who had gotten so much more close than any other person had ever managed. Hal reached for his pants and halted him, blue eyes stared in anticipation. Snakes eyes cautiously wandered to the occupant of the couch before he crouched down and got dangerously close to Hal's face.

"Will Sunny understand this…?" Hal whispered, gasped in slight surprise as Snakes cold hands touched his face. "I don't care." Snake whispered back. Their noses almost touched now, neither of them closing the gap between their lips. There still was something they needed to talk about.

"She'll ask questions-" Hal protested.

Snake shrugged, cold hands wandering through the brown hair of the other man. A smile found its way to Hal's face and in a daring move he finally got close enough to touch Snake's lips with his own. It was rather rare that they got this close, between saving the world and helping out people there was barely any time for private moments like that. Maybe that was what made them so special for the two.

"She'll accept it." Snake whispered after they had separated from each other. Soon after that both of them went to bed, huddled together in the cold bedroom with thoughts about Sunny and how to continue their strange life.

Chapter End Notes

This chapter is the reason why it's AU.  
And very OOC... but I didn't want to rewrite it...

I'm sorry I just can't keep Raiden out of any story... FITE MEH

 **6th December**

When Snake entered the living room in the morning it was empty. There was a note scribbled on the old newspaper, the blanket neatly folded and pillow on top. Snake shook his head to himself. The note had hastily scrawled letters on it that probably meant 'thanks', but it could have meant anything else too.

He didn't bother to dwell on whatever the kid was going through. He now had to deal with other things. And so he went to the kitchen to make coffee and froze in plate when he saw the girl sitting at the dining table on top of a folded blanket with one of Hal's laptops, typing into it rapidly.

"Good morning?" He muttered to the girl, slightly confused as to why she was awake this early and how she had left the bedroom without him noticing.

"M-m-morning." Sunny muttered back without ever taking her eyes off the screen.

"What are you doing?" Snake asked, wondering about this since he had noticed her. A kid her age should have been playing with toys, he assumed. Not that he had had a normal childhood to compare. Hal could have had better insight on that, yet Snake wasn't too sure what Hal's childhood looked like either. He had never asked.

"Chess." Sunny informed him and when Snake looked at the screen he saw that she was indeed playing chess against the computer.

"Is boring, isn't it?"

"Yes." Sunny nodded in agreement.

"Do you want to play chess against a real person?"

Sunny looked up from the screen, her eyes holding some sort of excitement. "I-I P-p-played against re-real p-p-people."

"And they were bad?"

Sunny huffed and nodded her agreement.

Snake smiled at her- it was so easy to be friendly to this girl- and turned to the coffee machine. "How about you turn that thing off and I show you how real chess is played."

"Y-y-you can?"

"I play against Hal sometimes."

Sunny hummed silently and turned the laptop off. While she shuffled off the chair to return the laptop to where she had found it, Snake poured himself a cup of coffee and placed the wooden chess game on the dining table. When Sunny returned, she stared at it as if it was not from this world. Carefully she reached out to the figures and looked at them from every angle.

"Never seen a real chess board before?" Snake jokingly asked and was shocked when Sunny shook her head.

"Th-th-they had n-nothing like this."

"They?"

"Th-the b-b-bad p-people. Jack s-s-said they a-are bad."

"He's probably right about that. You know where he went, by the way?"

"H-Home, he s-said."

Snake smiled while he sipped his coffee and watched Sunny set up the game. "His kid's probably around your age now."

"Jack h-has no ch-children." Sunny stated when she placed the queen to the designated place.

Snake almost choked on his coffee. "W-What? Did he say that?"

Sunny watched him with her brown eyes, nodded. "Jack s-said h-he w-was g-going to be a d-dad. But 'bad th-things h-happened' and n-now h-he's not." Sunny shrugged.

"Why did he tell you that?" Snake wondered aloud. Jack wasn't the person to tell anyone about his issues.

"I-I a-asked if he ha-had children."

Snake set the mug on the table and ran a hand through his hair. "No wonder he acted like that…" he muttered to himself.

Sunny tilted her head in confusion, but didn't bother to ask about it when she made the first move with her chess piece. They go pretty far with their game when Hal entered the kitchen with a yawn and headed for the coffee machine without even noticing the two other occupants of the kitchen.

"Morning." Snake muttered to his friend when he made the last move on the board. "Checkmate."

Instead of having the reaction Snake expected from a girl who had just lost an intense game of chess, Sunny's eyes widened and a big smile appeared on her face. "I l-lost!"

"You did. Wanna play again?"

Sunny shook her head, kidnapped snake's queen and headed back to the living room where she had put the laptop.

Hal settled down on the chair the girl had just sat on and eyes the game curiously. "This girl is a genius."

"She lacks experience."

"She's only ever played with npcs-"

Snake shook his head. "She talks like a grown up, ignoring that stutter. Acts like one too. If she was a few feet taller you wouldn't even know how old she is."

Hal stirred his coffee thoughtlessly. "You think they did something to her…?"

"You think they did not?" Snake asked with a slight edge to his voice. "She hacked your password on the laptop, by the way."

Hal sighed. "Yeah, I know…"

"A normal kid would have just asked."

"I like her." Hal tried to argue.

"I like her too, but that's not the point."

"You think she could be dangerous?" Hal asked silently.

"If we don't pay attention. She'll probably do it unintentionally, but she could get us in trouble."

"Then we just have to explain!" Hal hissed, tried hard to keep his voice silent so the girl wouldn't hear their conversation. "She's smart enough to understand that…"

"But is this really a good idea?"

Hal hung his head. "We knew her mother…?"

Snake sighed, reached for his mug again when he saw Sunny standing in the doorway, laptop clutched in her tiny hands and her eyes wide with an expression between confusion and sadness. Snake winced at her face. He hadn't meant to upset her, was about to apologize when Sunny spoke.

"Jack s-said he knew m-m-my m-m-mother t-too."

"He did." Snake muttered. "Want to hear more about her?"

Sunny chewed on her lip and nodded slowly. "…D-do you have a m-mother?" she directed at the two.

"My mother died when I was little." Hal told her silently.

"A-and you?" Sunny turned to Snake, came a few steps closer. Snake grabbed her around the waist and set her on his lap. His wasn't sure why he did it, but it felt natural to do so. "I don't know my mother."

A strange smile crossed Sunny's features. "L-l-like me. I w-will n-never meet h-her."

"What games do you like to play?" Hal then asked to finally change the topic.

"Chess." Sunny told him.

"How about the one you played yesterday?"

"Th-the AI is s-slow. I-It was t-too easy."

Hal sighed. "I'll see if I can find a decent game for you. Does that sound okay?"

Sunny nodded. "Uh-huh!"

 **7th December**

Chapter Notes

Trying to catch up with project deadlines, the next few chapters may be a little shorter.

Sunny slowly shuffled into the kitchen, attracted by a sweet smell she couldn't place. It seemed unusual and a little threatening to her. The place she came from had always smelled the same. There had never been anything out of the ordinary. Even being in a room with other people was new to her. She hadn't quite realized that until now, everything almost a shock to her, as it was happening so fast. She barely had time to understand what Jack explained to her before she was already at the place with the new people, who seemed kind, but also a bit scary to the young girl.

Now she was peeking into the kitchen, watched what Hal was doing. He cursed silently from time to time and didn't seem to notice her at all. It wasn't until the other occupant of the apartment entered the kitchen, that Hal noticed Sunny standing there.

"If it tastes the way it smells, it's good."

"I wouldn't bet on it, but I did exactly what the instructions said." Hal informed his friend and smiled at Sunny when he crouched down and held a bowl out to her. "My mother always let me have the rest of the batter, when she made cake."

Sunny reluctantly took the bowl, unsure what to do with it. Snake gave her a spoon. "You're supposed to eat it."

Sunny's small brows furrowed and she stood there, unable to process what the two wanted her to do. She didn't understand until Snake showed her, then she quietly retreated unto a corner of the Kitchen and carefully cleaned the bowl, the spoon scraping over the metal, making a sort of distinct sound, Hal thought he wouldn't forget this fast.

When he checked on the cake in the oven Snake came closer and frowned slightly. "It looks nice."

Hal nodded his agreement, but he didn't seem too convinced. "It's almost done… We should check if it tastes good before we bring it over."

"I h-h-have n-n-never had c-cake b-before." Sunny muttered from her corner and when both men turned she stood and brought the bowl over to the sink. She was barely tall enough to but the bowl on the counter before she shoved it into the sink. Hal made a mental node to buy a small footstool for her to stand on. The girl seemed willing to help with chores and hoped she wouldn't get bored of it as fast as everyone else did.

Sunny held up three fingers and pointed to the oven with the other hand. "We c-could k-keep three."

"One for everyone." Snake muttered. Sunny nodded quickly and smiled brightly.

 **8th December**

CHOS Dec 8

Sunny stared at the pink package Snake held out to her as if it was from another world. To Hal it looked like one of these play sets for little children. It had plastic teacups and all that. The main color of it was pink, accentuated with turquoise and other bright colors that hurt the eyes when looked at for too long.

Sunny slowly reached out for the package. "I-is this f-for me?"

Snake nodded with a warm smile. "If you don't want it I can take it back to the st-"

Before he had even finished, Sunny snatched the packed from his hands and hugged it like a plush toy. Hal made a mental note to look for something like that for Sunny.

"You're supposed to say thank you, Sunny." Hal reminded her. While she didn't do it intentional she lacked basic manners a four year old should have had in his opinion. Not that he knew many children at that age.

"Th-Thank you." Sunny muttered in Snake's direction, then proceeded to stare at the package.

"It's something to play with, you have to take it out." Snake explained.

Sunny frowned and stared at him as if he had said something unforgivable.

"I saw th-this in an-an a-advertisement." Sunny explained. "The chi-children in T-TV…"

Snake nodded. "Wanna open it?" He suggested while he fumbled for the combat knife in his pants. Hal instantly darted for a pair of scissors to keep damage and injury to a minimum and handed that to Snake.

Snake smirked at him. "Don't trust me with knives?" He muttered in a teasing matter. Hal only sighed and shook his head.

He watched as Snake unpacked the play set for Sunny and how the girl grasped a tiny pink plastic cup and stared at it like she had done with the chess pieces not too long ago. "I-It is very sm-smoooth." She commented and put the cup back on the coffee table, when knelt down in front of it and crossed her small arms on the table.

"And p-pink."

"You don't like pink?" Snake asked when he placed a turquoise colored cup on the table.

Sunny shoved the pink cup away to take the other and nodded slightly. "It i-is a p-painful c-c-color."

"I know, right?" Snake smiled at her and took out all the turquoise colored parts and shoved the pink back in the box.

"W-Wait!" Sunny then exclaimed. "Th-there is o-o-only two c-cups. U-uncle Hal n-n-n-needs one t-too!"

"Hal gets a pink cup?" Snake asked and smiled when sunny Nodded eagerly.

"T-there is n-not enough o-o-other colors."

 **9th December**

Hal watched Sunny sitting in front of the TV watching questionable cartoons. He really didn't want her to watch this but there was nothing else he could do to entertain this girl. She had discarded the play set already. It was neatly packed away in a corner of the living room, most likely to never be touched again. He remembered how Emma treated her toys the same way. A faint sting ran through his body when he thought of his sister.

Snake was busy putting together that footstool he had bought earlier and kept complaining about how hard it could be to put together something so tiny.

"You could have bought a plastic one-"

"I don't trust plastic." Snake shot back.

Hal smiled thinking about something very different when Snake's expression fell and he deadpanned at his friend. "You're not thinking what I think you are…"

Hal laughed silently and shook his head. "I probably am."

The engineer ducked away from a piece of flying cardboard while he continued to laugh.

Sunny had now noticed the commotion and watched the two from the couch. She had turned around and leaned over the backrest to see what these two were doing.

"Wh-why a-a-are you l-laughing?"

"Nothing." Snake immediately said, triumphantly placed the footstool on the ground only to watch it fall apart yet again. He was about to throw the thing off the balcony when Sunny scrambled off the couch and hurried over to him. She looked through the instructions and took it completely apart again and looked at Snake as if she wanted to tell him that he was hopeless for being unable to put together something as simple as this.

Hal had left him alone with it after Snake had insisted that he could build it together on his own, so he let him be.

"Snake." Sunny sighed as if she was scolding a child. "Y-you're su-supposed to p-p-put the s-s-screws in there." The girl pointed at the holes in the wood. And shook her head with a sigh when she grabbed the screwdriver and build the thing together on her own.

Hal was impressed to say the least. She not only understood the instructions, she could also follow them through without getting confused. This was way over the level of a four year old. Not to mention the fact that she was already able to read and write and knew words Hal himself rarely even used.

"D-d-done!" Sunny exclaimed after what felt like two minutes, then she shoved the footstool back to Snake. "Y-you need t-t-to-" Sunny handed him the screwdriver, expected him to understand what she wanted him to do.

"She doesn't have the strength." Hal explained when Sunny didn't.

Snake sighed, took the screwdriver and tightened the screws in the piece of furniture. Once that was Done sunny took the object and carried it back to the couch with her. Hal came closer to see what she was doing with it, and then saw it standing next to her on the couch, one of her arms around it.

Snake lifted an eyebrow at that. Hal only smiled.

"I thought kids only played with toys." Snake muttered slightly confused.

Hal shrugged. "Maybe she likes it because you gave it to her."

"You think she likes me?" Snake asked, even more confused sounding now.

Hal nodded. "Why not?"

"Why do _you_ like me?" Snake wanted to know then, face serious.

Hal hung his shoulders in defeat. "I just do. You're…" He felt his cheeks reddening. "Don't make me say this-"

"What if I do?" Snake poked his side, made him flinch away with a squeal.

"Just don't!" Hal laughed when Snake proceeded to tickle him and he tried to back away into the kitchen in hopes of being let off the hook then.

"Stop!" Sunny suddenly yelled from the couch. She was standing on it, the stool in her hand waving it around dangerously. Both men turned to her, wondering what she was trying to say.

"S-stop h-h-hurting U-u-uncle Hal!"

"Sunny-" Snake tried but the glare in her face was unforgiving. She had genuinely thought that he was trying to hurt Hal.

"Sunny," Hal then muttered. "Snake didn't hurt me."

"Y-you s-screamed." Sunny pouted, kept glaring at Snake.

While snake tried to find words to recover from this misunderstanding, Hal had walked over to Sunny, snatched her off the couch by snaking one arm around her waist and started tickling her instead. Instantly she squealed and flailed to get away. The stool fell out of her hands and her laughter echoed from the walls.

After a moment Hal stopped and let Sunny regain her breath. The girl stared at Snake now while still being held.

"That's what I did to Hal." Snake explained with a shrug.

"Th-that wa-was funny." Sunny said with a wide grin and demanded to be tickled again by Hal.

 **10th December**

Sunny grumbled in annoyance when Snake pulled the woolen hat deeply into her face. She batted his hand away, but only received a warning glare. "You'll freeze if you don't dress warm enough. Trust me I lived in Alaska for a while, I know how unpleasant that is."

Sunny huffed, plucked at the gloves on her hands. She didn't get why Snake wanted her to go outside this badly. So far she had no pleasant memories of the outside world and she was not quite sure if this experience would change her opinion of it.

Snake taking her hand and letting her walk on her own was a nice surprise though. Jack had carried her the whole time and she had really become upset at it over time. She could walk on her own!

"A-a-are there b-b-bad p-p-people?" Sunny then asked when Snake patiently waited for her to get down the stairs. She took her time with it, unfamiliar with how to conquer that frightening thing properly.

Snake sighed. "Everywhere. But I'll be with you, so you don't have to worry."

"W-where are we g-g-going?"

"To the store. Getting groceries."

Sunny carefully made her way downstairs and slipped her hand into Snake's once she had reached him. "Okay." She agreed silently, half her face disappearing when the hat slipped over her eyes. With a grumble she shoved it back up, making it slip off in the process.

Snake picked it up and put it back in her head. "It's a bit big for you, hm?"

Sunny nodded slightly, but soon that didn't matter anymore when she followed Snake outside into the snow covered streets. She blinked at the brightness of the snow, having only seen it at night before. It also made funny noises when stepped on, she noticed.

Quickly she let go do snake and proceeded to walk circles around him to make the funny noise. It was fun to do that and she wanted to keep doing it forever when Snake continued to walk and she had to follow him.

Once they had crossed the streets Sunny was almost ran over by a dog about the same size as her. She landed on her butt in the snow and stared at the dog, not knowing if she should be surprised or scared. She felt her eyes water when Snake picked her up and sat her back to her feet.

"I'm so sorry!" a woman yelled as she hurried over to them.

Sunny watched Snake shake his head and hold his hand out for the dog to sniff on it. Then he patted its back a few times and continued to walk. Sunny followed him closely, a little uneasy about all this now. There were a lot of people she didn't know and Jack had told her that bad guys had been chasing them. What if they were still looking for her?

She gripped snakes hand a little tighter and hid behind him, hoping that the bad people would not see her.

"Sunny…" Snake muttered after a while. "I can't walk properly if you cling to me like that…"

Sunny instantly let go of his hand, but kept walking very closely to him.

When they reached the store Sunny was overwhelmed by the amount of people and high shelves full of colorful items. She had never seen something like that in real life.

Without realizing it she was clinging to Snake again, tiny gloved hands digging into the fabric of his pants. She almost squeaked when Snake picked her up and sat her into the cart he had gotten. Sunny wasn't too happy about being confined in the tiny space, but she definitely liked that it kept the other people away. Snake wouldn't keep her in there, right?

But with that thought she was suddenly full of fear. Would Snake bring her back to the place Jack had taken her from? She had taken a liking to being around Hal and Snake, loved that they actually talked to her, that they gave her hugs and were kind to her. Had Snake enough of her now? Because she had yelled at him the previous day?

She bit her trembling lip when Snake put colorful items into the cart. She couldn't see them properly through her tears.

"You okay?" Snake asked silently and gently when Sunny pulled the hat over her eyes to hide that she was crying. She wasn't allowed to cry. She had always been scolded when she did, Snake would do that too, wouldn't he?

She flinched when the hat was pulled from her head, leaving her light colored hair standing up in all directions. Instantly she lowered her head and hid her face in her hands, trying to get rid of the flood of tears. "What are you crying for?" Snake didn't sound angry, but he also didn't sound too friendly now.

Sunny couldn't answer, wasn't sure what to say. She couldn't express herself that well. Maybe she was also afraid of Snake's answer. She tried hard to calm herself, but was unable to do so. She also felt people's stares on her, heard someone whisper how much of an ungrateful child she was. She knew the meaning of this word, wished she wouldn't now. Hal had mentioned that she didn't seem like a four year old a few times. How was a four year old supposed to act? She had no idea.

When Snake picked her up she was surprised. Her tiny hands automatically wrapped around his neck, and when he put a hand on her back the sobs came. She couldn't stop it at all, but instead of scolding her Snake just gently rocked her and rubber her back. "It's okay." He whispered, only for her to hear. Sunny thought he knew what she had been thinking. She wasn't sure why, but it was a nice thought.

He smelled differently from Jack or Hal, she noticed. She couldn't name what she smelled but it felt nice. Comfortable. She slowly calmed down after a while, but Snake didn't put her back into the cart even when he walked around to grab more items.

"I-I can help…" Sunny muttered after a moment, met the skeptical gaze of Snake. "Really!" She insisted.

She then was set to the ground and handed a grocery list with awful handwriting. But even though she couldn't read it properly she was determined to find the items on the list. Snake followed her through the store never let the distance get more than a few steps as he watched Sunny walking through aisles and pull out the items she could reach. She handed them to him and waited until he had packed them into the cart, then she turned and was greeted by the bright packaging of cereal boxes. She had never had those. In fact a few days ago it had been the first time she had ever had something other than that indefinable food she was given at the place she used to be at.

"Want one of those?" Snake asked her. Sunny wondered why he could read her thoughts but came to the conclusion that magicians might exist after all and nodded sheepishly. She had never asked for anything before. It was a strange feeling.

"Pick one." Snake smiled at her. "Hal loves that stuff, so if you don't like it, It won't go to waste."

A bright smile crossed Sunny's lips has she grabbed the bright red package with a huge bee on it and shoved it into the cart. Snake then put milk into the cart and soon enough they were out of the store again, Sunny proudly carrying her cereal box with the bee on it while trying to step into the footprints other people had left there.

She couldn't wait to get home and try out her new possession.

 **11th December**

Hal leaned against Snake on the couch, enjoying the silence even though Sunny wasn't annoying at all. She was always quiet and barely even spoke to anyone. Hal assumed that now that she had settled in and routine began to form, things stopped being exciting. She had realized that she would stay here for a while, possible forever. Until she was old enough to move out, when the patriots were defeated. Whenever that would be.

A yawn sounded next to him and the war blanket was moved over his shoulders when an arm wrapped around him and a head rested on his shoulder. If this position wouldn't cause such terrible neck pains he would have stayed like this forever. But Hal eventually had to move, he knew that. Still, for now he enjoyed being so close to his friend.

A few more minutes passed then Snake spoke silently. "I could get used to this."

"To what?" Hal asked curiously. He didn't dare to move, was feeling way to comfortable.

"Having a child."

Hal chuckled. "It's not as bad as I thought it would be."

"But if things get hairy again, we need a safe place for her."

Hal nodded, sighed silently. Of course they had a few safe houses but none of them were fit for a four year old, not to mention secure enough to keep harm away from her. "We'll just take her along, let her stay with me." Hal suggested.

"You think that works out? You're also in danger when things get bad." Snake reminded him.

"You usually get rid of them before they get to me." Hal sighed.

Snake lifted his head, rolled his eyes and kissed the cheek of his friend. "You think I'd let them get to you?"

"Not when you have a choice."

"Damn right." Snake whispered now, his voice a low rumble in Hal's ear that sent a shiver down his spine.

"Is the girl asleep?" He then asked silently.

"She was when I checked on her." Hal replied, yelped in surprise when Snake shot up from the couch, jumped over it and closed the bedroom door before he hurried back to the couch and almost tackled Hal when he jumped back over the backrest.

Hal needed a second to understand what Snake was planning, but when cool hands snaked under his shirt, he had a very good idea and only pulled the blanket over them so they wouldn't freeze.

 **12th December**

Hal watched the little girl curled up on the couch sleeping peacefully. Sunny had played with a tiny robot toy he had built just to entertain her and was now exhausted, hugging a pillow to her chest as she slept the day away. Again he thought of his sister, but shoved the thought far away. This was Sunny, not Emma.

He grabbed one of the woolen blankets that seemingly kept lying around everywhere. They really needed to stop buying blankets and actually start heating the place, but for some reason the thought of huddling next to Snake was way more comfortable than sitting next to a heater.

Carefully he placed the blanket over the girl, making sure not to wake her in the process. Snake handed him a coffee mug not much later, an expression on his face that Hal didn't like.

"What happened?"

Snake shook his head. He settled down on the couch with his cell phone in his hand. "The Kid sent me some weird message."

"Jack?" Hal asked silently, winced when Sunny stirred. He wasn't sure if she had heard the name or if it was just coincidence. He looked at Snake's phone and the message that seemed to be encrypted. Hal reached for pen and paper on the coffee table and scribbled the message down.

"I never thought he'd be the type to do this."

Snake shrugged. "Me neither."

Hal huddled up in another blanket and brooded over the weird combination of letters on the paper. Snake watched him for a while and turned on the TV and zapped through all the channels before turning it off again. Sunny slowly sat up then, yawned and slipped off the couch to head to the bathroom.

Snake wasn't surprised anymore how independent that little girl was. In fact he was sure she could care for herself completely if she would have had to. She wasn't scared of bugs, she cleaned up anything she played with, even when she spilled milk or cereals, this girl never left any trace behind. Snake did wonder why she was like that. Something was unusual about it.

While he was thinking about it Sunny headed to the kitchen and came back with the shopping list, looking for a pen. She found one on the coffee table and carefully scrawled 'soap' onto the list. While she was at it she also added toilet paper and 'More bee cereals'.

Snake chuckled silently when he saw that, was impressed at her somewhat shaky but otherwise quite tidy handwriting.

"More bee cereals?" Snake asked with a smile. Sunny nodded eagerly. "Uncle Hal a-ate so m-much of it!"

Hal ducked when Sunny glared at him. Her expression softened after a moment and she climbed back onto the couch, occupying the small space between Hal and Snake. "I-i-it's c-cold." She explained, collected the remote from the couch where Snake had left it just minutes ago and turned to TV back on. After she had switched to her favorite channel she climbed under the blanked and leaned against Snake.

While she did so she caught a glance at Hal trying to solve the encrypted message. "D-d-did Jack s-send th-this?" she asked curiously.

"Apparently." Hal muttered without ever taking his eyes off the paper.

"I c-can s-solve it." Sunny insisted and reached for the pen and the paper. "Jack t-told me h-how."

Snake lifted an eyebrow. He never considered Jack to be stupid, but this seemed so unlikely that he was sort of surprised when Sunny solved the message in a few seconds.

"H-He w-wrote 'I'm fine, Sunny'." Sunny read aloud. Snake and Hal both noted that Sunny's stutter did not come through when she read.

"So he was sending you a message?"

Sunny nodded. "I-I asked him."

"How…?" Hal was now curious.

"I-I u-u-used Snake's p-phone."

Snake ran a hand through his hair. "Sunny you need to keep your hands away from my phone. This isn't a toy." He scolded her, harsher than intended.

Sunny froze, eyes wide and uncertain, glistening for a second. "I-I know…" She whispered, bit her trembling lip when she slipped off the couch again and retreated to the corner with her set of teacups she hadn't touched in days. She still didn't, hid herself under a blanket and didn't move a hair for several minutes.

"…You shouldn't have-" Hal muttered, uncertain and slightly confused at Sunny's reaction.

"She can't just use things without permission, especially not my phone. It's bad enough that I have to use this thing." Snake sighed.

"That's neither her nor my fault." Hal reminded him. "She knows what she's doing."

"Until she doesn't and unintentionally ruins _this_." Snake raised his voice now, Hal glared at him for it.

"And what do you suggest?" Hal asked, harsh and on edge.

Snake sunk back into the couch with a sigh. "Rules."

"Fine." Hal hissed. "I don't know what place she came from, but from what I learned is that her whole daily routine was filled with rules from the moment she woke to the moment she went to bed."

"I know."

"Leave her be. She isn't meaning any harm."

Snake grumbled. "That's the point. She's smart, but naïve."

"I-I-I'm n-n-not!" Sunny hissed from under the blanket, reminding both men that she was present and heard every single word. Furiously she freed herself from the blanket and stared at them with a face red from anger and tear filled eyes.

"Sunny…" Hal tried but was ignored when the girl grabbed the blanket and rushed into the bedroom. Seconds later she came back, headed to the front door and put her shoes on.

Snake and Hal both jumped off the couch and rushed over to her. "Where do you think you're going?" Snake asked, now even harsher than before.

"Jack." Sunny growled, put on her tiny coat and the scarf. She glared at the hat, but didn't take it when she turned to the door and gripped the door handle. That was when Snake picked her up and was about to carry her back to the living room.

But instead of calmly complying the girl tried to wrestle him away, kicked and screamed and scratched at his face. Hal was surprised that Sunny was even capable of losing her temper like that. "You're mean!" she yelled, "You always talk behind my back! You don't take me serious at all!"

Hal briefly noted that Sunny spoke perfectly, before he realized the weight of her words and his insides twisted. He hadn't thought that Sunny had been this attentive to their conversations.

"Sunny!" Snake now hissed, voice a loud rumble that immediately shut the girl up. "We don't want you to leave."

Hal nodded and came closer when Sunny frowned at Snake. "B-b-but you s-s-said…" she trailed off, tears forming in her eyes and threatening to roll down her cheeks. Snake winced at the sight. This was the second time he had made her cry.

"I want you to ask before you use my things, got that?"

Sunny sniffed and nodded. "I-I d-d-don't w-want the b-bad g-guys to c-come here…" She explained.

"You wanted to know how Jack was doing." Hal concluded.

"I'm sorry." Snake apologized, hugged the girl tightly. "What I said wasn't very mature."

Sunny wrapped her arms around him and nodded. "Y-y-you were really m-mean." She muttered. "A-and y-you too Uncle Hal."

Hal chuckled and scratched his head. "True… we're both sorry. See, the bad guys are always just a few steps behind. It's hard to let our guard down." He tried to explain.

Sunny nodded in agreement. "Jack s-said that t-too."

 **13th December**

Snake sighed when Sunny demanded another bedtime story. Just a few days ago he had started doing this and Sunny seemed to like to hear about toned down versions of a 'legendary hero' saving the world. Hal had given him a raised eyebrow for that, but soon enough he just accepted it and as long as Sunny slept peacefully, he wasn't too worried about it.

Snake was just explaining a tight situation about having to run really fast and hiding inside lockers when Hal leaned against the doorframe to watch them. Sunny was sitting in bed, excited to hear the stories, demanding to hear more and more.

Snake eventually had nothing more to tell her for the night and smiled at her. "That's all for tonight."

Sunny hung her shoulders but nodded and cuddled up in her bed, that was when she noticed something under her pillow. Confused she pulled it out and realized it was a plush teddy bear. "That's from Hal." Snake told her.

"I-i-it's fluffy." Sunny whispered and hugged it tightly. "Th-thank you!"

Hal smiled. "You're welcome." He crouched down next to Snake and kisses Sunny's hair. He had started to do that about the time Snake began with the stories. Routine. Sunny didn't sleep well most nights. She would toss and turn and usually Hal or Snake had to put the blanked back over her when they woke up in the morning.

But things seemingly got more peaceful now. Hal hopes that the girl would stop having back dreams and just enjoy the life she had now. Still, he was very curious about the time she had spent with the patriots. Snake kissed Sunny's forehead after Hal had pulled away and wished her a good night before he stood and left the room with his friend, leaving the door open just enough for Sunny to see that there was still light in the living room.

When they both headed for the couch Hal suddenly stopped and grabbed Snake's sleeve. He leaned in to get a closer look at his friend and adjusted his glasses before he frowned deeply. "You're getting gray hair."

Snake chuckled and sat down on the couch. "Must be the stress." He joked.

Hal laughed silently and sat down next to him. "I wonder when I'll get gray hair."

"Who knows."

 **Chapter 14**

Hal frowned when cold hands touched his arm. The hand were definitely too tiny to be of his friend, so he assumed it was Sunny after a moment of confusion. The girl sniffled as if she had cried; he could barely see her outline in the darkness.

"Sunny?" Hal asked silently. "What's wrong?"

The girl was silent or a moment, long enough for Hal to sit up and switch on the nightstand lamp that was actually just a desk lamp. Snake had let him have it so he would stop running into the furniture if he had to get up at night, be it because inspiration was striking or he had to use the bathroom. Snake definitely could navigate better in the darkness than Hal could.

One the light was on; Sunny's brown eyes looked at him with a heartbreaking expression. He came to the conclusion that she had had a nightmare, but wasn't too sure about it.

"U-u-um…" She chewed on her lip. "It's c-c-cold…"

Hal winced, Sunny had been freezing. Without even thinking twice he grabbed his blanket and put it over her shoulders to warm her up, then he stood and finally turned the heater on. "I'm sorry." He whispered to the girl. Sunny just nodded and instead of heading back to her bed she climbed onto Hal's bed and crawled in the middle of it, he back pressed against Snake's who grumbled in response and Sunny held her breath for a second. Then when Hal chuckled Sunny giggled silently and curled up in the bed.

Hal grabbed one of the blankets from the living room and turned off the lights to continue sleeping. "Good night Sunny."

"Good N-n-n-night Uncle Hal."

 **Chapter 15**

Sunny carefully eyed the flat cardboard in front of her. It had a strange smell and when Snake opened it, Sunny could see something that looked like it was edible, but she wasn't too sure. Snake put a plate in front of her and a slice of the strange object onto it.

"Never had pizza?" He asked her with an amused chuckle.

Sunny shook her head. She had read about pizza, but she had never seen a real one in front of her. When Snake settled down at the dining table she noticed that Hal was nowhere in sight. Now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen him at all today. Confused she turned around, was about to call for him when Snake spoke.

"He won't come out of bed today." Snake smiled.

"W-why n-n-not?" Sunny frowned, concern displaying on her face.

"He caught a cold."

Sunny relaxed. She had read about various kinds of illnesses. And Colds were nasty but not dangerous. Still, that meant that food would be pizza today. Yet, after taking a few bites, Sunny decided that pizza wasn't so bad.

"D-d-do you h-h-have cr-" Sunny grumbled, trying to force the word out but it refused to form. Upset she slipped off the chair and grabbed pen and paper and scrawled 'crayons' onto it. "I s-s-saw them in an a-a-advertisement."

Snake shook his head, sighed. "We don't have anything like that."

Sunny resisted the urge to pout and decided to find a different way to accomplish what she had in mind.

After she had finished her slice of Pizza she put her plate in the sink and headed to the living room, armed with all pens she could find and a stack of printer paper. While Snake did the dishes he kept peeking into the living room to see what sunny was doing. The girl was lying on the ground on a blanket, and carefully scribbled onto the paper. Her feet in the air, swinging in the rhythm of the tune she hummed. The tune sounded familiar to Snake but he couldn't place it. While he was drying the dishes with a towel he had the tune stuck in his hand and doubted it would ever fade.

Sunny then suddenly jumped to her feet and dashed into the kitchen to show Snake what she had done.

"Potatoes?" Snake asked, somehow clueless. He scolded himself internally when Sunny's big smile turned into a very serious frown.

"No, Snake." Sunny hung her shoulders in defeat. "Th-This is y-you," She pointed to the big shape that looked like a bearded potato. "A-and th-this is uncle Hal," Her finger wandered to the shape with two big circles for eyes. "A-and th-this is m-me." There was a blue potato shape in the middle that, apart from size didn't look very much like Sunny at all.

"Oh." Snake muttered. "That looks really good." He tried, but Sunny couldn't be fooled by his act. "N-No. Th-this is not g-g-good. Yet." She scrunched up her nose and huffed. "B-but uncle Hal w-will l-like it."

Snake didn't add what he was thinking, but somehow he found Sunny's idea cute.

 **Chapter 16**

Sunny stood on her footstool in the kitchen, humming while she cleaned the two plates she and Snake had used earlier. Snake had went out to buy something-he hadn't said what- and so Sunny was alone in the Kitchen, cleaning up what she could. She had the laptop Hal had given her on the counter open with carious internet sites, one of them with how to make tea. She had found teabags that were not expired yet and while she waited for the tea to be ready she cleaned up whatever else was not clear yet.

Hal had left the bedroom for a few minutes to use the bathroom and then retreated right away again. When she looked at the clock on the laptop she hopped off the footstool and shoved it back to where the tea was, climbed back up on it and took the teabag out and placed it on a small plate she had set aside for that. Carefully she took the hot cup and climbed off the stool, then slowly made her way to the bedroom. As expected, Hal was sleeping again. Sunny had read that sleeping was best when sick and so she let him be.

She placed the cup on the nightstand and climbed onto the bed to pull the blanket over the man. while she was at it she took a look at his sleeping face. She giggled when Hal batted at a stray strand of hair that tickled his face.

When Sunny heard the door open and close she hopped off the bed and dashed back into the living room to help snake with whatever he had bought. It was two paper bags that looked rather heavy.

"I w-w-will help!" She declared and held out her arms to accept the bags into her arms.

Snake chuckled when he took the lighter bag of the two and gave it to Sunny. Sunny carefully made her way into the kitchen and placed the bag on the ground, waited for Snake to follow before she closed the door and opened the Fridge to put in anything that needed to go there. She took her footstool again and pushed it to the fridge, happily sorted in what Snake handed to her.

"Smells like tea." Snake noted after he had handed Sunny a packet of butter and a loaf of bread.

"I m-made t-tea for uncle Hal; Snake, b-b-bread does not g-g-go into the fr-fridge." Sunny sighed as if she had told him a thousand times and shoved the bread onto the counter to take the milk from Snake.

"You made tea all by yourself?"

Sunny nodded and sorted a slice of cheese into the fridge. "I-I just h-had to l-l-look up ins-instructions."

Snake shook his head with a proud smile "if this continues you can take over the housework completely." He joked. Sunny didn't seem too eager to do that.

"N-No. E-everyone n-needs to sh-share the ch-chores."

"But Hal isn't doing anything at the moment." Snake told her, testing her. He wanted to know how she solved this question.

Sunny sighed once more and shut the fridge. "H-he will wh-when he is n-not s-sick anymore."

Snake nodded slightly. "You're right. You can go play now, You were a great help."

To Snake's surprise Sunny shook her head. "I-I c-can help m-more!"

 **Chapter 17**

Hal brooded over a complicated software bug, still in bed but now utterly bored. A cold knocking him out that badly was quite rare and lying around doing nothing was not to his liking either. Snake and Sunny kept poking their heads into the bed room to see what and how he was doing. Sunny had now joined him and was playing a jump and run game on _her_ laptop, huddled close to him and making frustrated noises from time to time.

"You need to wait until the very last moment before you jump over that." Hal told her after Sunny growled and Hal was a little afraid that she would throw the laptop around. While he still had one spare, they were quite expensive and with their lack of funding, buying anything expensive was not going to happen.

"I-It worked!" Sunny exclaimed after a moment. "Th-Thank you!"

"Of course." Hal smiled, getting frustrated at the bug he was facing.

Sunny put her laptop aside and looked at his screen. She watched him for a moment, then tilted her head slightly. "No. G-go up a b-b-bit."

Hal scrolled up a few lines, frowned at what Sunny was trying to do. Before he knew it the girl had taken the laptop from his hands and placed it on her lap, typing into the device at rapid speed. Hal could barely follow her.

"Sunny?"

"Shh!" she hissed, eyes glued on the screen, following the lines as they passed by at a speed that made the man dizzy.

He sighed, moved the blanket away and was about to get up when Snake appeared at the door. He didn't look very happy.

"Hal…" Snake whispered, obviously to not get Sunny's attention. Hal wondered why when he left the bedroom and closed the door. Snake then showed his phone to him.

"What's up?" Hal wanted to know in confusion when he looked at the phone.

The message was full of spelling errors, but the meaning became very clear to Hal after a few seconds. _'Got caught!'_

"Is this from-"Hal asked silently.

"Jack." Snake hissed, glaring at the phone. "I don't think this was supposed to get sent to us."

"But what if it was?" Hal nervously bit his lip. "M-maybe he's asking for help-"

Snake gripped the phone tightly, making it creak in protest at the strong grasp. "Damn it, kid!" he hissed.

Before Hal could say anything more, Snake had already turned to the hallway and put shoes on. "You can't just go out there-"

Instead of answering Snake put a scarf on and the coat, grabbed his gun and shook his head to himself.

"Snake!" Hal yelled now. "You don't even know where he is!"

"That's what I'm going to find out!" Snake grabbed the door handle, opened the door a crack.

"Dave!" Hal was upset, fists clenched and face flushed.

"Hal…" Snake sighed, held up his phone. "I'll be back by midnight."

"Even when you don't find him?"

"Yeah."

"Promise it." Hal's voice was forceful, allowing no backtalk.

Snake hung his shoulders, but nodded once. "I promise, Hal."

" **Be Careful**." Hal made sure to make it clear that he wanted Snake to be as careful as possible. "Don't bring them here."

 **Chapter 18**

CHOS 18

Hal paced in the living room, waiting for his friend. It was now past midnight and he hadn't showed up, not given him a life sign. Hal hated these situations, remembered why he had enjoyed the quiet life. Earlier Sunny had found a few Christmas ornaments in the stairway when she had insisted on sweeping it. Hal knew she only did that to see if Snake had come home. But then she was too distracted hearing about Christmas and how people celebrated it to think about Snake. Sunny had googled all about it, in the end knew more about traditions and how to cook Christmas dinner than Hal had ever bothered to learned. And the presents. Sunny told him she didn't understand the meaning of giving each other presents. When Hal told her that he didn't really know that either, Sunny giggled at him.

Now she was asleep, had held his mouth shut when he tried to sing a lullaby for her. 'no singing!' she had made that very clear when her small hands batted at his face and held his lips tightly shut. He did get the hint and instead told her a story about giant robots and one man trying to save the world from it. He never knew if sunny got that these stories were real, but if she didn't it was better that way. He didn't want to pull her into this any deeper than she was already. Being held captive by the patriots was most likely the worse that could happen.

Hal flinched when a key scratched at the door. He held his breath, hope filling him. Snake was coming back, and he was most likely alright. If anything bad had happened he would have contacted him. Probably. But when the door opened, Hal did not see the brown hair he had expected. There was a blond head, bowed down, looking kind of limp. Hal took a step backwards, mind not quite processing what was happening. He reached for the spare gun under one of the chairs- it was a miracle sunny hadn't found that yet- when the door opened further and finally revealed the face Hal had waited to see.

"Give me a hand." Snake growled as he pulled the other person inside. Hal rushed over to him, shut the door, then grabbed the legs of the other man and helped snake carry him to the couch. "Damn it, kid." Snake hissed.

"W-What happened?" Hal asked with wide eyes, gaze wandered from Snake and the other person who undoubtedly was Jack.

Snake grabbed his cigarettes, thoughtlessly lit one in the living room, but Hal was too busy with trying to sort the questions in his head, to really comment on it. Sunny would later.

"That's what I'd like to know. Found him running from whatever scoundrels he had gotten on his ass."

"That doesn't sound like something we'd get involved in." Hal muttered.

"They were hired by someone, most likely to get rid of him. But who and what, I have no idea."

Hal sighed, leaned against the couch. "He should stay here for a few days…"

Snake scoffed. "As if he'd listen to us." He shook his head and turned around, then noticed the two Christmas ornaments sunny had arranged on the dead plant Hal wanted to throw out months ago.

"He's probably gone by daylight again- What's that?" he pointed to the dead plant.

"Sunny found them. I had to tell her a bit about Christmas."

"We're not even celebrating that." Snake commented with a lifted eyebrow.

"I couldn't bring myself to tell her that."

Snake sighed. "You're hopeless, Hal."

 **Chapter 19**

Hal grumbled when he woke up, only slowly remembering that he was sitting in the living room leaned against the couch for whatever reason. He had fallen asleep with the laptop next to him, open with something he couldn't quite remember looking at. It took him a few more seconds to realize he wasn't wearing his glasses. While he reached out to search for them he heard something shatter in the kitchen and a girl voice say "S-S-Sorry!"

Hal rubbed his stiff neck, too tired to think about what Sunny had broken, it didn't matter anyway. The girl was already cleaning it up. Once he had finally found the glasses on the coffee table he also saw that someone had put a blanket over him. Was Snake still sleeping? The clock on his laptop told him otherwise. Snake would be wide awake at nine am. He never slept in. But where was he?

Slowly Hal stood, jumped back with a surprised yelp at the person on the couch. Then he remembered why he had fallen asleep there. With a frown he eyed the younger male from head to toe, he was breathing, that was good. Overall he looked like he just needed to sleep, face buried in the couch cushion, arm hanging out, fingertips touching the carpet on the ground. Seemed like he was too out to care about that. The watch he was wearing had stopped, Hal then noticed. He briefly wondered why he even paid attention to that and then grabbed his laptop to join Sunny in the kitchen.

"G-g-good M-M-Morning Uncle Hal." She greeted him when she threw away the shards of whatever had broken. It looked like one of the many cups they had. The tea on the ground suggested that as well.

"S-Sorry. It S-s-slipped."

Hal shook his head as he put the laptop on the dining table. "You didn't get hurt, did you?"

Sunny held up her reddened hand. "It-it's not too bad." She told him, but Hal could see that she wasn't too happy with the pain this had brought upon her. He picked her up and sat her on the counter next to the sink and turned on the cold water. "Here, hold it under this." He told her silently.

"B-B-But-" Sunny helplessly protested and pointed to the still wet floor with her other hand.

"I'll clean that up, it's okay Sunny."

Sunny grumbled but didn't comment on it.

"Do you know where Snake is?"

"G-G-Getting f-f-food."

"Again?" Hal asked in disbelief. They never had to buy this much before. Then again living on pizza and soda alone was not the healthiest lifestyle.

Sunny nodded.

Hal sighed, grabbed the mop and wiped the floor clean, then gave Sunny a new cup and let her go about her business when she decided that her hand didn't hurt that much anymore.

Hal almost fell over his feet when suddenly the man on the couch appeared in the Kitchen. He looked really tired and kind of run down. "Hey." He greeted Hal, his face not showing much of a reaction until his eyes met Sunny's.

The girl quickly set the cup on the counter and rushed up to him to hug him. "Y-y-you're a-awake!"

Hal watched the two, how Jack idly ran a hand over Sunny's hair as if he had done it a thousand times. "Sorry, I keep getting you two in trouble. I'll be gone before you know it-"

"Hold it." Hal said firmly then, his voice taking on an edge he was surprised at. "You're going to get yourself killed if you continue like this."

"Like what?"

Hal threw his arms up. "You know what I mean. Do you know how long you were out?"

"Look," The younger male sighed. "I didn't mean to send that message to Snake."

"But you did and now you're here. And you're staying."

Jack scoffed grimly. "What, you gonna ground me?"

"I patched you up." Hal told him as he turned to the fridge and opened it. "Hit your head pretty badly."

"It's nothing-"

"I wouldn't call a graze nothing. That could have killed you."

Jack was about to fire back a retort when Snake entered the apartment and squeezed his way past the younger mal. "Good to see you up, kid." He commented silently as he put a paper bag on the counter and helped Hal sort the items.

"Stop calling me that."

"Kid?"

"I'm not a kid."

Snake grumbled into the paper bag as he pulled out a t-shirt that was obviously for Sunny. "I'll stop when you stop acting like one."

 **Chapter 20**

Sunny frowned at the weird contraption Hal was putting together in the living room next to the balcony door.

"W-w-what are you d-d-doing?" The girl eyed the ladder suspiciously, and didn't seem too convinced that whatever he was doing was a good idea. Until she saw the box with Christmas ornaments and the ball of yarn next to it. There were also fake twigs that looked like a mock up of a Christmas tree and wire.

"You'll see." Hal smiled at her.

"You'll hurt yourself." David sighed when he walked past him and onto the balcony where their temporary roommate was sitting on a plastic chair in the freezing cold. Sunny couldn't hear what they were talking about when Snake closed the door from the outside, but they were smoking. Something Sunny really didn't like.

She watched Hal for a few more seconds then, huffed and pushed open the door of the balcony.

"That doesn't mean- Sunny, what are you doing here?" Snake asked in confusion. "Go back inside its cold.

"Y-y-y-you're s-smoking!"

"Exactly, that's why you should stay inside." Snake told her.

Sunny's face turned red in anger when she gripped the packet of cigarettes and tossed it over the edge of the balcony.

"Sunny!" Snake sounded angry now.

Jack had caught the packet before it could fall down, gave Sunny a glare that was probably way harsher than intended. Sunny rewarded both of them with another glare and stomped back inside.

Hal had watched the whole scene and was not sure how to respond. He was tangled in Christmas lights and ornaments, twigs sticking to his pullover but Sunny didn't bother to look at him when she grabbed her laptop, typed a few things into it and then went back to the balcony. Wordlessly she sat the device on the ground inside, pushed open the door and then let a documentary play about how smoking kills.

"Sunny…" Hal sighed, the girl already on the way to the kitchen, for whatever reason.

Snake was now crouching in front of the laptop and widely typed random keys to stop the documentary from playing.

"Hal, how do I stop this?"

"You need to pause it-" Hal told him.

"Where?"

"Space bar." Jack sighed.

"What?" Snake frowned, by then Hal was trying to get off the ladder but only managed to fall down with the whole thing. Alarmed the other two jumped to their feet.

"I'm fine, nothing happened-" Hal sighed and freed himself from what he had trapped himself in.

Sunny peeked into the living room, alerted by the noise. She made sure that Hal was alright, then retreated back into the kitchen.

A few moments later the video was paused, Hal placed the ladder back where it had been before and sat down on the ground with a heavy sigh.

It took an hour until Hal had explained what he wanted to do with the ladder, half an hour more to actually put all the twigs and ornaments onto it.

"It l-l-looks like a chr-chrimast-tree." Sunny commented when she had finally dared to leave the kitchen, carefully balancing a tray in her hands with four cups of what smelled like hot chocolate.

"Th-that's b-better than s-s-smoking." She told the three males in the room and placed the tray on the coffee table in the living room.

She would get them to stop smoking. One way or another.

 **Chapter 21**

Sunny was curled up under the ladder contraption disguised like a Christmas tree, sitting on pillows and blankets and playing video games. She seemed distracted but carefully watched what was going on in the living room. How Snake had his feet on the table while reading that book he had read at least a dozen times since Sunny was here. And Hal typing into his laptop while cursing silently at times, and then Jack who sunny was glad was there, but all he did was sit on the balcony all day and stare into the distance. The girl had tried to ask him about what was wrong, but he only avoided her questions and eventually she had given up.

The girl jumped slightly when Snake placed a cup of hot chocolate in front of her. It had marshmallows swimming in it and each of them looked like the face of a snowman. Sunny squealed at the sight, eyes bright and a 'thank you' already on her lips.

"Figured you're like that." Snake smiled at her. He watched when Sunny turned to look outside the window to where Jack was standing, hands on the rail of the balcony. "He needs one too, huh?" Snake concluded.

"I-it's c-c-cold." Sunny nodded. When Snake stood to leave, she grabbed his sleeve. "Snake… w-w-why is he so s-sad?"

Snake shook his head. Sunny couldn't tell if he didn't know or didn't want to tell her. "He didn't tell me."

Sunny hung her tiny shoulders, suddenly dead set on making that man on the balcony happy again. She removed the blankets and the laptop from her lap, casted everything aside and scrambled over to the box of crayons Snake had eventually bought for her.

Snake watched her for a while, then just took her cup and placed it next to her. "It's getting cold."

"Th-thanks." Sunny muttered without looking up from what she was doing.

Snake walked over to Hal then, settled down next to him. "It's weird." Hal muttered almost immediately.

"What is?"

The younger male nodded to the balcony. "Just what in the world happened to him?"

Snake shrugged. "He's not telling and I'm not prying. Maybe Sunny can do something."

"Never knew he could be so quiet."

Snake scoffed. "His thoughts certainly aren't. Gotta keep an eye on him, feels like he'll jump sooner or later… He's staring at the skyline as if he's trying to get absorbed in it."

He got elbowed in the side at that. "Don't say that, Dave."

"You never thought about that?" Snake asked instead. "Just end it then and there?"

Hal shook his head. "Can't say I have. Did you?"

Snake averted his eyes and left Hal without an answer, but the silence was all Hal needed to understand.

"How'd you overcome it?"

Snake shrugged. "Don't remember."

"Really?"

"You might have played a part in that."

Hal frowned, then blushed and nervously pushed his glasses back up. He cleared his throat but didn't say anything, almost squeaked when the balcony door opened and their guest stepped into the warm living room. Sunny quickly gathered her paper and tried to hide it.

"D-d-don't look! It-it's not d-d-done yet!"

 **Chapter 22**

Snake woke to Sunny pulled on his arm. Alarmed he sat up, confused and not quite sure what was happening. At first he thought someone had broken in, but something told him that this wasn't the case.

"What's up, kid…?"

Sunny's eyes looked so frightened in the darkness of the bedroom that was only illuminated by light from the living room. Why was the door open at all? And how late was it? Snake usually was first to be awake.

Instead of telling him what was going on, Sunny just tried to drag him out of the bed. Maybe she was too frightened to speak, but what had frightened her so much? Hal was still asleep when Snake finally made his way out of the bed. Sometimes Snake was envious of his ability to sleep through any kind of noise.

In the living room it didn't take snake two seconds to piece together what had scared Sunny. It was the blonde more or less permanent guest who was hunched over on the couch, gasping for air and making sounds that would have frightened anyone who wasn't used to it.

"It's okay, Sunny." Snake sighed and walked up to the other man. "Kid," He tried, crouched down in front of the man while pushing the coffee table aside.

"W-what happened…?" Sunny asked curiously yet still frightened.

Snake shook his head. "It just looks bad. It's okay, Sunny."

The girl wasn't convinced and then snake noticed the pile of blankets next to Jack. Sunny had obviously tried to calm him down, but failed. She had no idea what she was facing, of course she was scared.

It took a few more seconds of silence until Jack finally reacted to Snake's voice. "Sorry." He apologized both to him and to Sunny.

"It's fine." Snake sighed. "Nightmares?"

A slow nod was his answer. "…didn't mean to scare Sunny-"

"I-i-it's o-okay." Sunny muttered. "I-I was j-j-just going t-to the b-b-bathroom… b-but…"

Snake ruffled her hair. "Sometimes this just happens." He shrugged.

The girl nodded, then instead of heading back to her own bed she moved her pillow and blanket into the living room and spread it on the carpet.

"Sunny…" Snake sighed. "Do you really want to sleep there?"

Sunny nodded firmly.

Snake was too tired to argue and just took her mattress and moved it into the living room so she wouldn't get cold and sore.

"Good night…" Snake sighed when he turned the lights off and retreated back into the bedroom.

There was a sound that sounded like "night" obviously coming from the male person in the living room, and a tiny almost inaudible "Good night uncle snake." From the girl.

Snake had a proud smile on his face when he crawled back into the bed, pleasantly surprised to have Hal hug him tightly once he had settled back down.

"What happened?" the engineer asked sleepily.

"Nightmares." Snake shrugged, suppressed a yawn and wrapped his arms around the other man. "Sunny's sleeping in the living room. Just thought I'd warn you before you panic or something."

Hal chuckled silently, but was already asleep again.

 **Chapter 23**

Hal watched Sunny play with origami figures she had created using various tutorials on the internet. She had used any paper she could find, newspaper, notes, even a dollar bill. Colored paper that came from somewhere. At the cardboard, Snake stopped her. Hal wasn't exactly sure why, but he didn't question it.

Right now he was sitting on the couch, Snake on the balcony, smoking. Jack was sitting on the ground close to Sunny. The girl had taken joy in positioning various kinds of origami animals on his shoulders and head. Every time he moved she would glare at him, reposition the animals and try to flick them off his shoulders with paper balls she had made much earlier.

Hal was amused by this, also glad Sunny was busy with playing rather than researching who knows what. He had looked through her browser history, but this girl knew how to cover her tracks. Again he almost forgot that she was only four. It felt so strange to him, to have such a mature girl sitting there. Ignoring her actual age and her height, one could have mistaken her for a teenager or even older. Sunny did throw fits at times though. Like a typical child.

However, those fits were barely about candy or not getting what she wanted. Most of the time they were about much more serious things, things children shouldn't even think about at her age.

"Ow."

Hal snapped back to reality and watched Jack rub his face as one of the paper balls had obviously hit his face.

"Sorry." Sunny muttered, highly concentrated on adjusting her aim and flicked the next ball. This time it actually hit an animal and it fell off Jack's shoulder.

Hal thought she would to this the whole evening, when she stood, stretched and yawned. Quickly she collected everything she had spread in the living room, scrap paper, unfinished origami. Hal didn't even dare to think about the paper scraps on the ground. The dark wooden floor looked almost white from the distance.

Jack had a much better idea, as he got a broom and was about to swipe everything up when Sunny protested.

"N-NO!" She yelled. "L-let me d-do that!" She held her tiny hands out for the broom and almost snatched it out of his hands when he handed it over to her.

Hal smiled at the confused gaze of the other male in the room, then turned when Snake entered the living room again and closed the balcony door. "It's damn cold outside." He growled.

"Y-y-you could s-stop s-smoking."

"It's not that easy, you know?" Jack replied instead of Sunny. "I used to smoke too. Took foreeeever to stop." He spread his arms to emphasize his words, smiled when Sunny laughed.

Snake settled down next to Hal with a strange smile on his face. "Was a good idea to keep him here."

Hal nodded slowly. He was still surprised that Sunny got along with the blond man this well. "He looks happier too."

 **Chapter 24**

Snake frowned when he found the living room empty the next morning. Sunny was still asleep, he hadn't expected her there. Everything was dark, but even without turning the lights on he knew that the room was devoid of any human life. It was just a feeling. When he turned the lights on, he sighed. The couch was empty, blanket folded neatly, pillow on top. He felt as if he experienced a Déjà vu. This time he found no note that said anything.

No message on his phone. Nothing.

"What are you doing, kid…" Snake sighed. He wasn't sure if he should worry about Jack or not, but Sunny would definitely.

And when the girl showed up just a few minutes later, she definitely searched the whole apartment for the blond man. Twenty minutes later, she had accepted the fact that Jack was not there and retreated under the ladder that mocked any real Christmas tree.

"Why d-did he r-r-run away?" Sunny asked silently, it wasn't hard to tell that she was heartbroken that her friend had disappeared.

"I don't know." Snake grumbled. He was about as upset as Sunny was, but for different reasons. Sunny had lost a playmate; Snake knew too well that people didn't run for no reason.

Daily life continued as usual even without their guest. Sunny filled up a bowl of cereals and settled down in front of the TV as she flipped through channels. Snake noticed that she kept looking at the front door in hopes that her friend would come back.

Somehow Snake knew he wouldn't show up again. Maybe never again. There was just something about it that made him feel very melancholic.

Hal just shrugged at the fact that their guest had disappeared, obviously not expecting that he would have stayed for longer than he had. And so they had lunch and dinner and eventually Sunny went to bed again, but her big eyes were sad and full of questions after Hal had said good night and Snake was about to tell her the story he told her every night.

"…T-the bad people… th-they f-found him… y-yes?" The girl asked silently as if afraid that Hal would hear her.

"I don't know that, Sunny." He sighed. "But if I hear something I will tell you immediately, you okay with that?"

Sunny nodded, chewed on her lip as her sad eyes casted downwards and she hugged Snake's arm. "Th-the s-story." She urged him on, not letting go of him even when he already started telling her about long forgotten adventures with fifty dogs in Alaska.

 **Chapter 25**

Chapter Notes

it's done... sorry for so many delays...  
BUT i said i'd finish them, and I did. On time. Thank you all for your support, i really appreciate it much more than i show.

Thank you!  
And merry christmas!

Sunny squealed when she jumped into the snow outside, happy to be able to go out again and this time with both Snake and Hal. She wasn't sure where they were going, but Hal had mumbled something about Christmas day and Sunny was very pleased that it involved taking a walk with both of them. Even when they were holdings hands while trying to hide that fact, Sunny had definitely noticed. She grinned at them and jumped into the deeper snow, then almost disappeared completely into it.

Snake chuckled when he grabbed the girl and pulled her out of the snow. "You okay?"

"Y-yup!" Sunny cheered and proceeded to find more snow to jump in.

Hal grabbed a bit of snow and formed it to a snowball, missed Snake's head by a hair when the man in question ducked. The snowball hit Sunny instead who immediately gathered up snow and threw it at him, making it rain down on her.

"You need to make a snowball." Hal explained and showed her how to do it.

Sunny crouched down to make a snowball, when suddenly she jumped at Hal and threw all the snow into his face.

He yelped in surprise, was then chased by Sunny. Snake sighed and shook his head, slowly continuing to walk so the other two would catch up eventually. They were going for a walk to a close by lake that looked rather pretty in the evening. Now the Sun was up, but covered by thick clouds and overall the day looked as if it tried to mourn something. Snake shook his head at the thought and turned to Hal and Sunny.

"I'm going without you." He declared. Sunny immediately rushed up to him, followed closely by Hal.

When they had reached the lake Snake sat down on a bench, feeling unusually tired all of a sudden. He assumed he was coming down with a cold, paid it no mind. It was nothing to be too worried about.

After a few minutes of resting, he did feel alright again anyway. Hal and Sunny never noticed. Sunny was too busy feeding the ducks. She was surprised that Hal had brought bread along, but now that was forgotten as well.

Snake paced around for a bit, watched them and the few snowflakes that fell down, then his attention got caught by something a little further away. He walked up to it, something red in the snow. It was most likely blood.

Once he had reached it, it was indeed what he thought. The snow was splattered by blood, but nobody in sight. The soil below had been brought up, there had obviously been a fight here. He shook his head and sighed, turned away when he saw something in the corner of his eye. It was white, so he almost didn't notice, but when he reached out he realized it was one of the origami figures Sunny had made.

A heavy weight settled in his stomach when he picked it up, noticed the blood on the edges. He flinched when Sunny yelled for him to come back ; she wanted to show him something.

He took a deep breath and slipped the origami into his pocket, then turned and headed back to Sunny and Hal, his mind occupied with anything but having fun with them.

He had to tell Hal.

He forced a smile onto his face when Sunny handed him a slice of bread and showed him how to feed the ducks, knew Hal had already noticed that something was off.

He couldn't tell him here. Not when Sunny was there.


End file.
